Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY
by ShadowCell
Summary: AU, CE 77. ZAFT has returned to the Earth Sphere to avenge its defeat, and the crew of the battleship Minerva finds itself swept up in a war that will decide the fate of humanity...
1. Phase 01: Valentine

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Disclaimer: _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED_, _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY_, _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED CE 73 STARGAZER,_ _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ASTRAY_, _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED FRAME ASTRAYS_, _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED CE 73 DELTA ASTRAY_, _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED MSV _and _Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY MSV_ are the property of Bandai and Sunrise, not me. I make no money off of this work. This is purely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement is intended.

—

This is the sequel to "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED TWILIGHT." You will probably not know what's going on in here if you haven't read "TWILIGHT." You don't necessarily need to have read "Red Planet," although it does explain several events referenced in this story. Also, I will take this opportunity to announce right now that there will be no sequel after this. The story ends with "SEED ETERNITY."

I will post a new chapter every Friday, or the soonest day thereafter should something arise on Friday to keep me from posting.

—

In CE 74, the Junius War came to an end, with ZAFT attempting to fire its new superweapon Solomon's Sword at the Earth. The attempt failed; Solomon's Sword was disabled before it could fire and subsequently destroyed by the forces of the Earth Alliance. FAITH member Valentine Sunogachi and Strike Freedom Gundam pilot Kira Yamato led the ZAFT fleet in a retreat to Mars.

In CE 77, Lord Djibril's Earth Alliance brutally subjugates the world, hunting down and killing any remaining Coordinators. To fight back, a patchwork Resistance was formed, but division and distrust mitigated its influence and it was destroyed in a climactic final battle with the Alliance.

However, forgotten during the years of civil war were the survivors of ZAFT and the Coordinator people, and they have now returned...

—

Phase 01 - Valentine

—

**April 6th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

The sweet feeling of a world in fear washed over Messiah's control room, and once the cameras clicked off, Valentine Sunogachi lifted her head back and laughed. Short and laconic, her message announcing ZAFT's return had nonetheless thrown the entire Earth Sphere into terror—and if only they knew what she had planned for them. They were right to fear—and soon they would know why.

She seized the intercom as one of the deckhands changed the frequency for her. "Soldiers of ZAFT!" she cried. "We have waited and suffered for three years, fighting that miserable war against Vargas and his creatures, rebuilding our army, preparing for this day—and it has finally arrived! We have returned to the Earth Sphere, and the Naturals and traitors tremble before us! Our plan is foolproof; our armies are unstoppable; our cause is just! Now," she flung her arm out with a wild grin, "go out, and _have some fun!_"

"_Yes ma'am!_" answered thousands of ZAFT soldiers, and the black sky outside lit up as ZAFT warships activated their engines and moved out for the kill.

Valentine cast a grin across the room, at the figure standing off to the side. He smiled back, nodded almost imperceptibly, and took his leave. Yes, his troops had waited for this day as well—and now it was time to let out all that pent-up anger and pain.

The wreckage drifted placidly outside Messiah. Lagrange Point 5 was a fitting nest for ZAFT's reborn forces. Surrounded by the dense wreckage of their former homeland, the ZAFT troops would be well-protected against virtually anything the Alliance threw at them. Nuclear weapons would have to navigate the shoal zone; the Requiem cannon would have to crack through Messiah's beam shield, after it had proven strong enough to stand up to Emmanuel Vargas's mighty Beelzebub Array.

And of course, nestled in Messiah's main hangar was the yet-incomplete leviathan that would truly take from the Alliance the blood they owed. The ZAKU Goliath would introduce the Naturals to pain they never knew could be felt.

At her side, Admiral Vandread Harkill glanced nervously at the grinning marshal. "The NEO-GENESIS array and the Neutron Stampeder will put a hole in the shoal zone's defenses," he warned.

"We'll deal with that when the time comes," Valentine said with a wave. "After all, it's not like we'll be here forever."

—

**April 7th, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

A deep shudder rippled through the hull and the deck of the _Fortuna_ as it dropped out of its brace in Messiah's vast warship dock. It stood silent for a moment, and then the engines came to life with a roar. The blue-rimmed battleship nosed out of the dock and towards the hangar opening—and the dense, seething shoal zone, and beyond that, the Earth.

Standing tall on the _Fortuna_'s bridge with arms crossed as his mighty flagship crossed the shoal zone and edged out into open space, Kira Yamato surveyed it all with mismatched eyes. His first mission was quite simply to attack and destroy a space colony or a civilian convoy or whatever other innocent target presented itself—just to do it.

Of course, the real reason wasn't "just to do it." Kira knew that well. Such meaningless malice was not the forte of his lovely marshal. The point, of course, was to make sure that the Alliance and its citizens had something to fear. Fear was important, and without fear the rest of the plan would not work. But Kira Yamato and his soldiers could provide fear.

He glanced down at Lyle, the _Fortuna_'s faithful captain. "First target of opportunity looks like it'll be a civilian _Marseille III_-class freighter," Lyle reported. "IFF has it as part of the Junk Guild. Are they off-limits?"

Kira looked back at the screen, and the yellow and black hexagonal logo of the Junk Guild. He would have to be strong; as strong as he had been at Austral, or at Deimos. Strength and a heart of steel would be necessary now. On him depended the future of his people. He would have to be strong, for the Coordinators, for Valentine...and for _her_.

"No one is off-limits. Prepare to fire."

And so the war began.

—

"Well, well, well," chuckled Kara Guinness, floating by the railing of the _Fortuna_'s interior observation deck. The green shimmering beams of the _Fortuna_'s Tristan cannons lanced out and speared the floundering _Marseille III_ freighter through the midsection, and the ship snapped in two amid a thundering firestorm. "First blood is ours, boys."

Standing behind her, Juarez Recardo watched without emotion on his face, and Gary Talon witnessed it all with something akin to disdain. "If you want to call an unarmed freighter 'first blood,'" Gary snorted. "Call me when we're attacking something that can shoot back."

Kara nodded towards the Junk Guild ship's smoldering wreckage. "Do that a few more times and we'll have something that shoots back on our hands." She grinned. "Yeah, let 'em come at us. We can take 'em. We can take 'em all."

Arms crossed, Juarez watched the wreckage with something unpleasant stirring in his throat. A few hours back in the Earth Sphere and they were already committing war crimes. But this, he reminded himself, was the plan; to terrify and distract the Alliance with atrocities like this, while reducing their population, crippling their military and economy, and making sure that the Earth Alliance and Blue Cosmos could never threaten the Coordinator people ever again.

After all, this was what Lord Djibril had done three years ago with his Requiem. He had simply been just inept enough to leave some Coordinators alive, enough to build a new army at Mars and return and bring Armageddon with them. And ZAFT wasn't even out to eradicate the Naturals entirely; they would just kill enough to secure the Coordinators' existence.

So, as the Junk Guild ship's wreckage drifted apart and the _Fortuna_ arced away from the wreck in search of its next prey, why did it feel so wrong?

—

**Heaven's Base, Iceland**

"Admiral Mathis, I don't care what it takes! Organize your fleet and attack Lagrange Point 5 at once! The Requiem will back you up if need be, we will send Destroy units if we must, we will fling nuclear warheads until not a single atom remains at L5, but we _will not let ZAFT stay there!_ Do you understand?"

On the screen, the bald and goateed Vice Admiral Kevin Mathis tried to look apologetic. "Sir, it's going to take some time to recall my forces and join Admiral Stone." He shook his head. "Besides, sir, the ZAFT forces are starting to disperse. There's a skeleton guard left to protect that fortress at L5, but the bulk of their fleet has begun to move out, and they're breaking into small units."

"All the better to crush them, then!" Djibril snarled. "Admiral, I order you to get your forces moving and start hunting down and destroying those ZAFT units," he scowled, "before they have a chance to _do_ anything."

Djibril did not bother returning Mathis's salute as the screen went dark, and instead whirled around on the Heaven's Base commandant. "I want updates every hour at least. I want to know everything that goes on at L5. I want to know where every ZAFT unit is. I will not let them get a foothold here. Once you have Arzachel contacted, order them to assemble a fleet to crush these exiled Coordinators once and for all."

"Y-Yes sir," the commandant answered, and set to work.

Fury bubbling in his veins, Djibril turned back towards the Heaven's Base control room's main screen, where a camera feed was fixed on Messiah, floating serenely amid the debris. They were waiting, and he knew deep down that ZAFT had something terrifying waiting there for him. He had lost contact with Vargas months ago and could only assume that Vargas and the MLA had been destroyed—so, so much for _that_ little investment. It had only bought him a couple of years, just barely enough to crush the Resistance—on Earth.

A new prospect, that of the Resistance in space joining with ZAFT, assaulted the back of his mind. He forced it down. The Alliance Space Force would take care of this, as he had been grooming them for three years to do. The Coordinators would die. And the world would be blue and clean once more.

—

**April 8th, CE 77 - Yokosuka Naval Installation, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

This, Ivan Danilov knew in the pit of his stomach, was the war he had been waiting for.

ZAFT had returned. Their fortress had nestled itself in the shoal zone of L5, where the PLANTs once stood, now protected by the wreckage of their former home. The ZAFT fleet had begun to spread out in small, mobile units. Already reports were coming in of ZAFT attacks—on civilian targets, isolated military targets, whatever passed through their crosshairs first.

Standing on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, Danilov put a hand to his chin in troubled thought. Attacking military targets was one thing, but civilians? Was this just out of malice? Were ZAFT's soldiers so bent on seeking revenge that they would target innocents? The cold-hearted military strategist in him wished that it were so, because if all ZAFT wanted was blood, they would be easier to destroy. Soldiers with no other cause than murder were the easiest to defeat, because every battle gave them what they wanted, and that made them sloppy.

But of course that wasn't what ZAFT wanted. It couldn't be. They wouldn't have spent three years in exile at Mars rebuilding their army to just come back and murder. There was more to this, he knew.

The auxiliary screen flicked on and Danilov perfunctorily saluted the grim figure of Marshal Markav.

"Captain Danilov," she said, "I will skip the pleasantries. You are being redeployed to space, and your ship's new mission will be to engage ZAFT forces until told otherwise. Continue to engage the _Minerva_ if the opportunity arises, but your primary target will now be ZAFT. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am," Danilov answered. "Do we know what it is they want yet?"

"Intel has taken a few guesses, but so far we can only assume," she replied with a shrug. "Their fleet is splitting up into small units of a few ships. The _Charlemagne_ should have much to do hunting them down and eliminating them."

"We won't disappoint."

Crayt fixed him with a skeptical look for a moment. "See that you don't. Markav, out."

As the screen went dark, Danilov turned towards the rest of the bridge and glanced over at Vera. "Begin the pressure checks and expedite our resupply and repairs. We will set course for Taiwan and use the Kaohsiung mass driver."

As his crew set to work, Danilov turned his eyes back towards the sky. ZAFT was out there, and ZAFT was his real enemy—so perhaps this would be the end of all that damned ambiguity.

—

Grey Saiba looked up in annoyance at the rushing sound of the quiet crew lounge's door sliding open. Bad enough that he and Merau both had nearly been killed by that stupid Zamzazar crew at Carpentaria, and Merau was still in sickbay over it; now he couldn't even have a cup of coffee in peace.

Instead of finding the sneering officer he expected, however, he came face to face with a black-haired girl whose collar tabs on her black Phantom Pain uniform indicated that her rank was the same as his. She adjusted the duffel bag over her shoulder and stuck her hand out with a smile.

"You must be Ensign Saiba," she said, as Grey nervously shook her hand. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Good things, I hope?" asked Grey.

She shrugged. "I've heard that you're one of the pilots that the Angel of Death can't seem to kill. Whether that's good or bad is up to you."

"I'll take what I can get. And you are...?"

"Erin Gedelberg. New pilot on the _Charlemagne_." She offered a reassuring smile—although Grey decidedly did not feel reassured. "Oh, I've got some good news for you, too. You and Ensign Seraux were selected for a couple of new machines."

At that, Grey perked up. "We were?"

"You were." She motioned for him to follow, and soon enough they both arrived at the hangar and stepped onto the mobile suit deck.

Grey looked up into the eyes of five new mobile suits with the faces of Gundams. A Strike unit with huge thrusters on its shoulders, a Buster unit with some rearranged weapons, a Duel with a much smaller Assault Shroud system, a Blitz with two huge claws on its back, and a ZAFT unit with an ungainly series of weapons. He recognized them after a moment's thought.

"The Luna Project machines? Here?"

"Arzachel shipped them to Yokosuka for _Typhoon_, but didn't make it in time for the operation," Erin explained, with a hint of something Grey didn't quite like in her eyes. "The Regen Duel is yours. The Gale Strike is mine." She grinned back. "Impressed?"

Grey looked back up at the Regen Duel, and thought of the Angel of Death.

_Aren't you in for a surprise..._

—

It lay in ruins.

Yes, it was beyond salvation. Sven Cal Bayan stared down from the gantry at the wreckage of his faithful Strike Noir. The Destiny Gundam had dealt enough damage that trying to repair it was pointless. But that would not be a problem for long. No, as he glanced down at his tablet, he knew that this was a blessing in disguise.

The Crusader Gundam. Currently under final testing and fittings at Daedalus Crater, but once the _Charlemagne_ arrived in space, it would meet up with an Alliance ship that would bring the Crusader with it. The Strike Noir had always been a step or two behind the Destiny in performance, and only Sven's own skill had made up the deficit—enough to keep the Noir in one piece, more or less, but never enough to best the shimmering wings of light. Now it would change. Now he would have his own wings of light, now he would fight the Resistance's champion on equal terms, and the engineers even guessed that the Crusader—with cutting-edge avionics and a revamped control system—could even outmatch the Destiny on specs alone. His hands itched to take its controls and at long last avenge his many defeats. The Resistance would fear his mighty Crusader, and so would ZAFT.

He glanced down the hangar, where Shams and Mudie were surveying the ruins of their own machines. They too would get new weapons from Daedalus Crater. The transforming Vanguard and the nimble Artemis would come with the Crusader and stand at its side—but he would need no one, once he had that Gundam.

Yes, the time had come to fulfill his mission. He shoved down the voice of his younger self before it could speak. He would fulfill his mission—even if he had to destroy the stars themselves.

—

**April 9th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, orbit of Earth**

Meyrin Hawke had almost forgotten what a pain in the ass zero-gravity was.

She refastened the restraint on the captain's char with a sigh and glanced up through the bridge windows, at the vast inky tableau of outer space. It had taken so much blood and effort to get up here. A _Compton_-class landship with the Resistance had escorted the _Minerva_ part of the way to Woomera and protected it from Alliance _Siegfried_ planes as the winged battleship attached its space booster, set up its positronic interference cloud, and rocketed into space. They had ultimately been forced to ditch the booster once they hit the exosphere, but by then the _Minerva_'s own thrusters were sufficient to carry it into orbit. And the landship below...well, they had died on their own terms.

Copland and Chiao Xu's orders came through shortly after that. The _Minerva_ was to seek out the Vedlow Fleet. That was all well and good, she supposed; Aoma Vedlow was one of the few figures in the Resistance as feared and respected as the _Minerva_. Vedlow had singlehandedly reshaped the Resistance in space into a respectable fighting force...although that had also wound up shaping the Alliance Space Force into an equally respectable fighting force. Funny how that worked out.

"The Vedlow Fleet says they're—oh, goddammit," Roxy muttered; as she turned in her chair, she nearly floated out of it, and jabbed her foot under the comm console to stop herself. "This is gonna take some getting used to."

"As graceful as a seagull," Abbey shot back with a little too proud a smirk. "You were saying, Miss Bannon?"

Roxy scowled back. "The Vedlow Fleet is sending a ship. They'll call us, don't call them, now if you'll kindly let me buckle the fuck up..."

Meyrin waved it off. "Burt, keep an eye out. We're probably going to attract an Alliance patrol too, but we'll just have to let whoever comes at us take the first shot."

She glanced to the side, towards Lagrange Point 5. ZAFT was there; home was there; and that was something she was not ready to face yet.

—

"Welcome back, little Kira," chuckled Rau Le Creuset, floating on the interior observation deck and staring towards L5. "And Valentine, my, how you've grown. I can feel the fingers of madness working at your mind all the way from here."

He gleefully regarded their presences for a moment. Valentine was slowly being consumed by madness, and that was hilariously ironic, but he could certainly see why. The space around her—the space filled with her little army—was seething with anger, frustration, sorrow, regret, and pain. She had been stewing in that for three years. If the reports were accurate, her forces were now fanning out across the Earth Sphere and targeting Alliance and civilian alike. But surely there was more to her plan than just bloodshed. Rau had not trained her like that.

And then there was Kira. He too had stewed in that paroxysm of rage and heartbreak, but his presence had a different contour to it. Yes, Kira Yamato had swathed himself in coldness, ruthlessness, and determination—to hide the pulsing core of sorrow, of pain, of regret, of horror at what he had done and was about to do. Rau did not know what had happened at Mars, but there Kira Yamato had forged himself anew, into Valentine's gleaming sword to change the world.

But, Rau mused, as he turned his thoughts towards the _Minerva_ and that one special pulsing life within its hull, he had a sword of his own now. She just needed some sharpening.

—

This was going to take some serious getting used to.

Athrun Zala watched with a touch of sympathy and more amusement than was really necessary as Viveka floundered after the pull-bar in zero gravity. Moving in a weightless environment was second nature to him—one learned to navigate zero-g environments almost at the same time one learned to walk when one lived on a space colony—but poor Viveka had not spent much time in space. Well, she would learn. She had already crashed into a bulkhead, so she would better learn.

"I'm gonna kick your ass if you're laughing at me," she snarled.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Athrun lied, and took her by the shoulder to guide her back towards the wall. "Maneuvering yourself in zero-g is more art than science anyway."

Viveka finally latched onto the pull-bar. "I've heard _that_ before," she growled, and with Athrun in tow she took off down the corridor. "So I've been a ground-pounder all this time. Mind filling me in on the Vedlow Fleet?"

Athrun merely shrugged. "Not much to tell. They're run by an ex-ZAFT pilot—"

"Oh, dammit, there had better not be any grudges."

"There's one, but she has it under control. Vedlow's outfit is probably one of the best things the Resistance has going for it. She's made the Resistance in space a force worth taking seriously."

Viveka snorted disgustedly. "That makes me feel better."

Athrun held back a sigh. It was hard to feel better after the defeat at Carpentaria—and calling it a defeat was charitable. He'd had that foreboding feeling of impending defeat ever since hearing about Chiao Xu's master plan to end the war, but to think it would end so badly...it was almost impossible to believe. The Alliance had gathered such a massive force and brought down the hammer so swiftly and completely. Even the Requiem had burned and melted away the Resistance's lines. The survivors had fled and now whoever was left was taking stock and preparing to continue the war...

But, he mused as he instinctively turned towards the direction of L5, there was something else in the mix too. And although he could not sense it, he could nevertheless feel his heart darken and his blood chill at the thought of his old friend.

"Grudges or not," he said quietly, "pretty soon I suspect we'll be heading for ZAFT."

Viveka arched an eyebrow. "Why?"

"They have forces and they brought a fleet with them. They're the Alliance's enemy. It's a strategic opportunity that the Resistance's leadership can't afford to pass up."

"Well then," Viveka said, and stopped the pull-bar, "you haven't heard what happened to the _Feynman_."

"The what?"

"Junk Guild ship. _Marseille III_, clearly marked, totally neutral. But," her eye narrowed, "a ZAFT unit blew it away. Just like that." Athrun felt his heart drop. "There's unconfirmed reports all over the Earth Sphere of ZAFT units destroying civilian targets. Freighters, transports, agriculture satellites, you name it."

Athrun turned his eyes back towards L5 again.

_Kira...what are you doing?_

—

"Out of one clusterfuck and into another," sighed Sting Oakley, drifting before his silent Chaos Gundam in the _Minerva_'s hangar. "Except this is twice the fun and twice the clusterfuck."

Auel Neider cast a contemptuous glance over his shoulder. "Motherfuckers sure know how to make an entrance, anyway."

"Yeah, well, better get used to that." He nodded towards the Chaos and Abyss. "Something tells me we're gonna be trading fire with ZAFT as much as we do with the Alliance."

"I know they're shooting at civilians," Auel said, "but why would we care about that now? It hasn't stopped us from working with douchebags before."

"These aren't any douchebags. They're ZAFT. They've got technology and firepower that makes us look like kids."

Auel snorted in disgust. "Big fuckin' deal. We've got Terminal, and Terminal's got geniuses on it. Aren't they making a new mobile suit, like, right now or something?"

"Something like that. Some high-performance thing. But the rest of us might get some real fucking upgrades, so..."

Sting trailed off, and the two Extended glanced down awkwardly back at their two Gundams. Carpentaria had changed the tide of the war, and ZAFT's return had scrambled everyone's calculations, so Terminal would have to make things different...or things would never be set right.

—

Stella was scared.

That was the clearest emotion Shinn could pick up from her, standing by her side in their shared bunk. She was scared. And, he supposed, rightfully so. ZAFT had been reported attacking civilian targets. They had built up their fleet to more or less the same size as it was at the outset of the Battle of Solomon's Sword. It had brought space traffic to a standstill, it had effortlessly taken control of Lagrange Point 5, and preliminary Alliance attacks on the shoal zone had all been turned back by Messiah and its skeleton guard.

And, somewhere out there, Shinn could feel the pulsing, gleaming presence of Kira Yamato.

Shinn's blood boiled at the thought. He had changed. His presence felt almost armored, a dark, ruthless determination shielding a throbbing inner pain. His time at Mars had toughened him somehow, made him stronger, and now he had returned to the Earth Sphere with some evil intent. But surely he and Sunogachi and their soldiers weren't content to just slaughter civilians and piecemeal Alliance units. Not after the Requiem, not after their exile, not after all they must have been through. There had to be more to this.

"Shinn," Stella began, her eyes shimmering with fear, "what's gonna happen?"

He pushed the anger and fear out of his mind, hoping to give her a clear answer. The _Minerva_ would meet with the Vedlow Fleet and begin laying plans for a retaliatory attack. The target was unknown; Shinn's first impulse was Althea Crater, in an effort to remind the world of the Alliance's Extended program and all its horrors. Copland hoped to drive a wedge between the Atlantic Federation and Eurasian Federation, and possibly pick up the Republic of East Asia in the crossfire.

But Chiao Xu...he was already dispatching agents to set up a meeting with the new ZAFT Marshal. He was already trying to bring ZAFT into the fold. Perhaps he would change his mind after hearing about those reports of attacks on civilians...or perhaps he wouldn't.

He looked up and felt his blood boil again. Kira Yamato was still out there. The man who had killed his family, his friends, Kika...now he was out there, doing that to millions of other people. And how many of them would have the twists of fate and circumstance that would give them Newtype powers and hand them powerful mobile weapons with which to exact revenge?

Shinn furrowed his brow. It was no longer his own war.

—

Emily von Oldendorf remembered bits and pieces of ZAFT and the Valentine and Junius Wars, although truthfully, both wars had always been fairly far away. ZAFT had taken land on the Earth, even at Gibraltar, while she still lived in Europe during the Valentine War...but they remained far away, and once she was moved to Lord Djibril's residence in the Atlantic Federation, they were that much farther. And then she was sent to Heaven's Base in Iceland, and the arms of the Junius War never reached the Earth Alliance's icy citadel. ZAFT was something frightening to watch on the news, perhaps, but they were always just there—on the news.

Of course, she thought bitterly, they were also her enemy, which she was trained to destroy just as surely as she was trained to destroy the armies of other nations on Earth. That was much foggier, because the memories of her training had not fully returned...although by now she could no longer deny that they were there.

She couldn't quite blame them for coming back with war on the mind, although like most residents of the Earth Sphere, the Requiem blast that destroyed the PLANTs had been a shocking but otherwise forgettable event. Not so for the Coordinators. That was their home Lord Djibril had vaporized.

Emily closed her eyes and thought of what they would do. They were attacking civilian targets; that meant the _Minerva_, if no one else in the Resistance, would fight against them. The _Minerva_'s captain and crew followed their own moral compass.

And as for herself...well, she was the _Minerva_'s Angel of Death. She had her sister. She had her friends. They needed her—needed her power.

_That's right_, she thought. _My power_.

—

**April 10th, CE 77 - Resistance **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Star One**_**, orbit of Earth**

"So. There it is."

The words hung like a toxic cloud in the captain's office of the _Star One_. Kicked back in the chair with her feet propped up on the desk sat stony-faced Aoma Vedlow, with the imposing air of a woman whose patience was on edge.

The bearded man at her side, swathed in an old Earth Alliance uniform and service overcoat, shrugged indifferently. "They _are_ on our side, Aoma."

"Tell that to Argus."

"Argus was stupid and shot at their backs. We're not going to do that, because as angry as you are, you're not stupid."

Aoma laughed, a cold, harsh noise filling the air. "That's why I keep you around, Ali." She motioned disdainfully towards the screen on her computer terminal, linked to the _Star One_'s external cameras and showing the _Minerva_ on approach to her vessel. "I suppose the practical thing to do would be to get over it."

Ali arched an eyebrow. "Emotions don't mix with practicality."

"Yeah, but in our line of work emotions will probably just get you killed." Her eyes darkened. "Like they got _him_ killed."

"Forgiven or not, we're going to have to work with them even more now that the planetary Resistance has been incapacitated," Ali warned. "Particularly on some major upcoming operation. You know Copland wants us to lead a retaliation for Carpentaria, and we still have to figure out how to deal with ZAFT too." He paused, choosing his words. "And they probably won't take you back."

"No," she agreed. "They probably don't need me. And if those reports about the _Feynman_ and the others are right, they may not really be on our side anyway." She glanced at the _Minerva_'s image again. "Well. I'm not about to go pulling an Argus on you, if that's any comfort."

"It will suffice," Ali said with a smirk.

Aoma narrowed her eyes at the _Minerva_'s image.

_But don't think I've forgotten, Shinn Asuka..._

—

To be continued...


	2. Phase 02: The Vedlow Fleet

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 02 - The Vedlow Fleet

—

**April 10th, CE 77 - Battleship _Minerva_, orbit of Earth**

A _Nazca_-class destroyer loomed up ahead before the _Minerva_, and on the ship's interior observation deck, Emily felt a distinct sense of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. The Vedlow Fleet was led by an ex-ZAFT soldier and had provided refuge for many ZAFT soldiers after the Junius War. So had Carpentaria—and ZAFT veterans from Carpentaria had tried to kill her there. Would this time be the same?

At her side, Rau Le Creuset sensed her fear and chuckled knowingly. "Commander Vedlow is not as foolish as Argus," he said. "She has a grudge, but she has more sense than anger."

Emily eyed the _Nazca_ destroyer carefully. "What happened?"

"Shinn killed her best friend in battle during the Junius War, and to the best of my knowledge, she has not forgiven him for it yet."

That was no comfort. "I can stand by in the Twilight, just in case."

"Not likely. We're going to be part of the party going over to meet with them."

At that, Emily cast a crestfallen glance towards the _Nazca_. The last thing she wanted was to leave the _Minerva_ exposed in case somebody's grudge came to the surface. So this was one of Shinn's old comrades, who had lost her friend to Shinn's actions...well, they were fighting a different war and they would have to get along. They had scarier enemies.

At least, that was what Emily thought, and she hoped that Aoma Vedlow would see it that way too.

—

"We'll need to move our docking operation elsewhere," said the bearded, swarthy man on the _Star One_'s bridge, distinctly out of place in his Earth Alliance service coat. "An Alliance patrol often passes through this sector. They came through about thirty hours ago and they shouldn't be due back for another six to eight, but I'm sure you understand that we'd rather not take any chances."

"Of course," agreed Meyrin. "We should probably move to the Debris Belt. Even if they spot us, they'd have to reach us to do anything about it, and that's easier said than done."

Ali Salaam al-Husayn nodded his agreement. "It's best to keep a low profile anyway," he went on, "after that debacle at Carpentaria." He shrugged, as Meyrin's thoughts clouded over with the bitter memories of utter, stupefying defeat. "At least you escaped."

"It cost the lives of everyone on the _Anzac_," Abbey said quietly.

"A lot of people died in that battle who didn't deserve to," he replied. "The important thing is that some of us have escaped and there's something to rebuild from." He shrugged. "And in space, we're still going strong."

There was that, at least. "We'll follow your lead," Meyrin said.

"Then lead we will," Ali agreed. "_Star One_, out."

Meyrin sat back and hoped. The Vedlow Fleet was the professional part of the Resistance, she reminded herself; Commander Vedlow had forged from a bunch of criminals, ZAFT veterans, disaffected Alliance soldiers, drifters, and rebels a disciplined and talented fighting force. They were capable of taking on squadrons of Alliance Space Force warships and they often won. The fleet had two refit _Nelson_-class battleships, a _Laurasia_-class frigate, and five refit _Drake_-class destroyers. It had dozens of mobile suits. It was on good terms with virtually all of the Resistance's leaders.

But it also had ghosts and demons. The Junius War had strewn those all over the Earth Sphere, even aboard the _Minerva_. Some were stronger than others, and Meyrin forced down her fear at the thought that Commander Vedlow's ghosts were the stronger ones.

—

"I hate being in space," groaned Roxy.

In the crew lounge, Athrun and Viveka shared a glance and then dared to look back at Roxy. The red-haired comm officer was fiddling with a zero-g bottle and a white bottle of some European beer neither of them had seen before.

"Err, dare I ask why?" Athrun finally ventured.

"Booze is not meant to be drank through a goddamn straw," Roxy groused. "But you can't do it any other way in zero-g, or else it'll go in your eyes and that fucking _hurts_." She unscrewed the lid and then flailed after it as it floated from her grasp. "And _that_ keeps happening!"

Athrun shook his head. "Am I the only one who's been in zero-g a lot?"

"I told you I'd kick your ass if you laughed at me," Viveka shot back, and even frustrated Roxy had to stop and snicker at that. "Hey, you too!" Viveka added with a glare.

"I've been in zero-g enough," Roxy answered with a shrug. "I just haven't been drinking in zero-g enough. So I thought I'd see how it works."

"About as well as it does on Earth," said Athrun with a shrug of his own. "Don't get too hammered, though. We're going to be linking up with the _Star One_ soon, and we need you to be at least a little sober for it."

Roxy waved the white little bottle contemptuously. "This shit's ten percent alcohol by volume. It'll take more than that to get me plastered."

Viveka sat back. "Hey, we're going to Terminal soon, aren't we?"

"Something like that."

"And they build mobile suits there?"

Athrun arched an eyebrow. "...something like that. Why?"

"'cuz," Viveka said with a grin, "I want a new one!"

"Uh, I don't think it's gonna work that way," Athrun started.

"Man, women just get needier and needier these days," chuckled Roxy.

"Shut your hole. It's important." Viveka turned back towards Athrun. "They _are_ building a new mobile suit, aren't they?"

Athrun put a hand to his chin in thought. "Yes," he said, "but it's probably meant for Emily. Chiao Xu and Copland have plans for her."

At that, Viveka's excited grin vanished. "Like what?"

"Like they want to make her into something like Shinn," Athrun explained. "She's getting a reputation for it already, but especially now, with the Earthside Resistance in tatters. They'll need all the heroes they can get."

"So where the hell did they get a new mobile suit from?" Roxy asked.

"They were building it already and they just converted it, according to specs that Meyrin's sent in," Athrun said. "If we're going to Terminal anytime soon, it will be to pick that thing up."

Viveka heaved a melodramatic sigh. "My little sister's growing up so fast."

Athrun did not laugh, instead reaching out with his senses to find Emily on the ship.

_That she is._

—

Stella floated over her trusty Gaia Gundam in the _Minerva_'s hangar, staring contemplatively at it. Not far away, Sting and Auel watched her, shared a glance, and shrugged. There was no use trying to figure her out.

"Stella remembers space," she started. "There's scary things up here."

Auel snorted in laughter. "There's nothing up here scarier than you," he chuckled.

"Well, something like that," Sting added. "You should get some sleep. We're gonna be on standby here while the others are meeting with Vedlow."

"Okay," Stella mumbled, and turned to move towards the gantry. Sting sighed quietly and watched her go.

"Rumor mill says we're going to attack Althea soon." He glanced meaningfully at Auel. "You know what goes on there."

Auel shuddered. "Bunch of fuckers if you ask me."

"I guess it's important," Sting went on. "Like, we couldn't get away with not doing it. 'cuz the Alliance makes Extended, and Extended do so much damage to us. But still..."

"Can't decide if it's gonna be fun or if it's gonna hurt."

"Exactly."

They both fell silent. Their horrors had all come from Lodonia Island, but they had spent a bit of time at Althea as well, before Captain Lee had taught them to be free. And now they were free, but there were hundreds of Extended at various stages of alteration and training at Althea Crater.

"We'll probably have to kill them," Sting spoke up suddenly, and Auel looked over sharply at him. "I mean, think about it. We needed Lee to basically run down our block words and break our dependencies, and both of us have the benefit of not really being as dependent as Stella. We'd need someone to do that for hundreds of Extended from Althea. We're not gonna have that. And without that, they'll either die themselves when the organ shutdowns kick in, or they'll get killed in the battle, or they'll go crazy and have to be put down." He shrugged. "Is there some other way?"

"What's the point of all this if we can't save _any_ of them?" Auel shot back. "Why'd we run away, then?"

Sting glanced down at the Chaos and struggled to find an answer.

—

Aoma Vedlow was a ZAFT Red. She had been assigned to the _Minerva_ as one of Shinn Asuka's replacements after the Battle of Arzachel Crater. She left after Solomon's Sword, struck out on her own, and now commanded a famous Resistance outfit.

And, Shinn knew from the furious presence on the _Star One_, she had never forgiven him for killing her friend at Orb.

But she was just one of many ghosts and pits of rage he had left around the Earth Sphere. Argus and his men had been foolish enough to act on it, and now they were rotting on the ocean floor for it. Aoma Vedlow was not that foolish, but she was still angry, and still in pain.

Shinn closed his eyes. Everything was coming back now. ZAFT had returned, and with them returned the memories of Lunamaria and Rey. In different ways, he had been unable to save either of them. He had been too angry, too impulsive, too caught up in his own powers. He had let Luna tag along at Solomon's Sword, only to see Rey kill her once and for all; he had failed to talk Rey over to his own side, the side where he belonged, so they could fight together, like it was meant to be. Rey had always offered him guidance, security, an anchor in the stormy seas of a life in flux. But he had felt anger instead, that Rey had sided with Dullindal instead; that Rey had never understood. They were Newtypes. They _should_ have understood.

But as Shinn looked ahead and felt the burning presence of ZAFT at L5, he knew that they did not, and no one would—because now they were all ghosts, and ghosts never argued.

—

**Heaven's Base, Iceland**

"Sir, I just cannot pull together units fast enough," protested Vice Admiral Mathis from faraway Arzachel Crater. "Not to simultaneously destroy the ZAFT fortress at L5 and to hunt down and destroy its fleet units."

On the command platform in Heaven's Base's control room, Lord Djibril's eyes flashed in fury. Every moment of delay was an advantage ZAFT gained over him. He had no idea what ZAFT and Sunogachi were planning and Vargas had done little to find out. Yes, Vargas had been a waste, as Djibril thought back on it. He had shipped decommissioned weapons from the Earth Sphere to arm Vargas's little military, expecting to finish off the reeling ZAFT, and look what that had gotten him. The frustration gnawed at him, and it did not help that Mathis was giving him more bad news.

"If I may say so, sir," Mathis went on, "I think we may need to be patient. ZAFT units are already striking out at any targets they can find, civilian and military. They'll blunder into our sights soon enough. We'll be able to pick their fleet apart piece by piece, and leave Messiah defenseless."

Djibril seethed. "Admiral, we do not have the time for _patience_," he snarled. "Damn it all...if only that Requiem shot had been a little more accurate. Taken down the other six PLANTs before ZAFT could evacuate their inhabitants. And Vargas..."

"We can be ready for a fleet attack on L5 in two days at the most," Mathis said. "No sooner than that. Unit recalls and repairs take time."

"I know," Djibril snapped, and whirled around in frustration. For all his successes in the Junius War, he had not quite finished the job...and now the bacteria left untouched by his antibiotic had multiplied.

—

**ZAFT _Minerva_-class battleship _Fortuna_, orbit of Earth**

The broken, smoking remains of a civilian space liner drifted around the _Fortuna_, and Kira stood tall and cold on the bridge, arms crossed, regarding it all with a mask of stone. A knot of terrified bodies, faces frozen in death screams, drifted by the bridge windows; Kira crushed the horror and sorrow before they could bubble up to the surface. Changing the world required sacrifice—of them, and of himself, because their blood was on his hands now. They both twitched, one of flesh and bone, one of metal and joints.

Lyle glanced up from the captain's chair. "Civilian space traffic is slowing down sooner than we expected. What are we going to do about targets?"

"The Alliance is taking its time," Kira answered. "Which is odd. They should be all over us by now."

"Does this negatively affect our plans?"

"Not in the least. If they're not going to stop us from destroying the Earth Sphere's space transit systems and bringing the colonies' economies to a halt, then so much the better." He waved forward. "If we run out of ships to target, then we'll start going after stationary satellites."

Of course, people would be without power, without food, without medicine, without basic necessities for life in space. And they would be the ones not killed by ZAFT's attacks. But once again, Kira crushed the emotions that would have left him weak had he left them to surface. The new world he was building demanded strength and sacrifice, and he would sacrifice just as surely as they would.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"The Deep Space Survey and Development Organization is technically neutral," explained Valentine Sunogachi from her imposing throne in Messiah's opulent control room, "but there are no neutrals in this war. The Troya Research Station is where they're carrying out final research on an experimental mobile suit for deep space exploration. It has all kinds of cool stuff inside it that we want, and its research and neutrality put it in a good position to help the Alliance alleviate economic and technological problems that we cause. So," her eyes narrowed meaningfully, "you know what to do."

The green-haired young man in the gold-decorated ZAFT White uniform smirked back on the main screen, the FAITH badge on his lapel gleaming. "Understood, marshal. Will you want any of the staff or the station's computers captured too?"

Valentine shrugged. "Once they see you coming they'll probably wipe their computers or something. Capture the prototype and whatever else is possible, but don't take unnecessary risks. I'm expecting your team to come back in one piece, commander."

The silver eyes of Varder Ehrmacht flashed with anticipation. "In one piece shall we return, then. The _Seraphim_ will depart." He saluted, and the screen went dark.

Valentine turned at the feeling of a new presence in the room, and casually accepted the salute of a dark-skinned man in the purple uniform of a ZAFT flag officer. "And what brings you here, General Ghomak?"

"My troops are ready for their descent," answered Jordon Ghomak, and Valentine quietly thanked herself for the foresight to put him in charge of ZAFT's compact Earth combat forces. "And it looks like Lagash is still operational."

Lagash. One of her trump cards, and one of her best-kept secrets. The loyal soldiers of Lagash had sequestered themselves on the Pacific Ocean's nearly inaccessible floor. The struggles of the ZAFT remnant and Wellington at Carpentaria had been nothing to them; they remained in silence, waiting for the ZAFT fleet's return. And they had not been idle; they had built the heavy equipment, even the land battleships that Ghomak's forces would need once back on Earth. Valentine idly wished that Wellington had sent his troops there instead of to Carpentaria, had he known about it...but such was war. Lagash could supply more than enough manpower and materiel to make ZAFT a formidable terrestrial and naval fighting force.

Yes, ZAFT had returned to an Earth Sphere that did not yet properly fear. But they would.

—

**Resistance _Nazca_-class destroyer _Star One_, Debris Belt**

It was almost like being in ZAFT again.

The impression filtered through Meyrin Hawke's consciousness as she was led through the halls of the _Star One_, immaculately maintained as though it were still part of the ZAFT fleet. Most of its original crew was gone, replaced by Commander Vedlow's most trusted men. She had obviously benefited from being a ZAFT Red; few leaders would be able to whip into this sort of shape the people she had started with.

Meyrin and her entourage arrived at the bridge under the escort of several soldiers in a motley array of uniforms. The doors slid open and Meyrin came face to face with Aoma Vedlow.

Unlike her troops, Aoma wore dark civilian clothes, and the steely look in her eyes betrayed everything as her gaze fell on Shinn Asuka. Meyrin stuck her hand forward to defuse any scene that might arise. "It's good to see you again, Aoma."

Aoma forced her attention back on Meyrin and put on a smile. "Moving on up in the world, I see," she said, and Meyrin almost winced at the artificiality of it. "Last time I saw you like this, you were sitting in that chair off to the side on the bridge. Now you're in the chair in the middle."

"And it's awfully hard to fill," Meyrin admitted. She shook hands with Ali next. "I'm glad you've found a niche for yourself, though."

"It was this or committing suicide," Aoma said bitterly, and for a moment they both fell silent, remembering a man on the _Minerva_ who had chosen the latter. "Well," she said, "the first thing we'll need to do is get to Terminal." She glanced at Ali, who dutifully activated the mapping console. "Copland is going there, and Chiao Xu is setting up a meeting with the new ZAFT leader."

"Speaking of suicide," muttered Meyrin.

"I know, but he's Chiao Xu and he thinks that he's going to be able to reason with them." She gestured at the console. "In the meantime, I'm getting my troops ready to fight ZAFT if need be. Fortunately we haven't had too many defections. Don't know if the same can be said on your end."

Meyrin eyed Aoma with a lopsided smile. "We aren't on ZAFT's side either," she said, "remember? We're the traitors."

Aoma cast a surreptitious, furious glance at Shinn. "Yes, you are."

—

"So," Emily said quietly in the _Star One_'s hangar, "that's the Impulse."

At her side floated Viveka, and they both regarded the silent gray Gundam standing before them. The _Star One_'s cramped hangar had three weapon packs for the machine's back, and there was a small airplane on the floor before it that seemed to be folded up and destined for the machine's torso.

"Whoever decided that you should have to put a Gundam together in midair should be shot," Viveka put in. "Seriously, that's so stupid."

Emily looked into the Impulse's darkened eyes. This was the machine Shinn had piloted, as he made his name and his powers blossomed. He had used it once or twice in simulator matches, and even without a mothership launching replacement parts and Silhouette packs, it made for a formidable foe.

She thought back to Shinn's tenure in the Junius War and his reputation now. Then, he was the Traitor Asuka, the man who turned his back on his country and constantly bested the comrades sent to destroy him. Now, he was the hero of the Resistance—and Emily herself seemed to be joining him on that miserable pedestal. How had he handled it during the Junius War, spending his time with space pirates and Lacus Clyne's private militia? How did he handle it now, as the symbol of hope for millions of oppressed people throughout the Earth Sphere? How was she going to handle it?

Emily glanced over at her sister as a hand shook her back to reality. "What's wrong, Em?" Viveka asked. "You've got that spacey look on your face, like Stella or something."

That was a frightening thought. "Tired," she said, and hoped her sister would buy it. She did not.

"Well, don't go zoning out in here," Viveka warned, and jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. "They're moving shit around in here. It's dangerous."

"So noted," Emily answered. She turned her eyes back towards the slumbering Impulse.

Well, Shinn Asuka had taken the power he never wanted and made it his own. She would do the same. She was the Angel of Death, the Resistance's heroine, and now that ZAFT had returned to the Earth Sphere and the Earthside Resistance lay shattered, she was more important than ever.

And that was a feeling she hated.

—

Rau Le Creuset grinned wolfishly from his chair. The main computer of the _Star One_ held all sorts of interesting information culled by the various intelligence operatives of Terminal and the Vedlow Fleet. Aoma's men had let him in here without question. After all, he was the great masked ZAFT ace of the Valentine War and the Junius War. What ill intent could he possibly have?

Speaking of the devil, ZAFT was certainly doing its damnedest to set itself up as the greatest of all evils in the Earth Sphere. Even the worst of Lord Djibril's flunkies would not shoot at unarmed civilian ships unless they had a reason. And, he suspected, if Valentine and Kira's hand were behind this plot, neither would ZAFT forces. They had a purpose too. He already had a few guesses, but when he boiled it all down he found that he really did not find it critically important.

Instead, there was the ZAKU Goliath. The _Star One_'s databanks were disappointingly silent on that final monstrosity to spring from the mind of Gilbert Dullindal, but Rau remained undeterred. Dullindal's Destiny Plan had been multifaceted, and his ultimate weapon, the ZAKU Goliath, was meant to serve as the sentinel of the Coordinators and all others who lived in space as they evolved into Newtypes. Funding, technological hurdles, and ZAFT's deteriorating military position prevented its construction, but Valentine's minions had spirited away a copy of the machine's plans to Mars. And clearly she was going to use it. The thing was the very Platonic form of destruction descended upon mortals, so that they might know the essence of destruction in its purest incarnation.

But the ZAKU Goliath needed a powerful Newtype to coordinate its various weapons. It was a one man army, but that one man needed an extraordinary mind. And, feeling Emily's flickering presence on the ship somewhere, he knew one already waiting.

In the meantime, however, he had other loose ends in need of attendance, like poor little Kira. Valentine had twisted him into something new, and Rau was eager to find out what.

—

"Althea Crater," said Ali with a stunned sigh. "That's a tough one."

Standing nearby on the _Star One_'s bridge, Athrun Zala nodded solemnly. "Well, we have to do something to make up for Carpentaria."

"Yes, but Althea? That's where they make their Extended. There aren't many targets in the Earth Sphere better defended than that."

"No, there aren't," Athrun agreed, "but still..." He shook his head. "Damn it. I wish I agreed with the Resistance's leadership more often."

Ali cast a skeptical glance out the bridge windows. "I think I know what's going on here. Chiao Xu is angling for a meeting with ZAFT to discuss an alliance. But after that disaster at Carpentaria, we're going to have to prove to them that we're actually a creditable fighting force." He shrugged. "Hence, Althea. I still think it's foolish. But that's my guess."

Athrun shrugged. "I suppose we don't really have a choice. We lost a lot down there."

"Yes," Ali said, "but let's make sure the same doesn't happen here." He swept a hand towards the bridge windows, where the vast twisting Debris Belt lay. "The Alliance has been hunting for Terminal for months. There's too much we'd be putting at risk."

At that, Athrun merely sat back and rubbed his temples. "I know, I know," he answered. "But if we don't make a move, someone else will." He cast a glance of his own in the direction of L5, and the pulsing, twisting mass of hatred at its center. "And it'll probably be even worse."

—

Tension rippled through the air as Shinn Asuka rounded a corner and came face to face with Aoma Vedlow. Shinn blinked in surprise at the palpable feeling of rage bubbling underneath her surface, barely contained. That, he recalled vaguely, was his fault; he had killed her best friend in the Junius War, and so...

"For what it's worth," he said quietly as she marched past, "I'm sorry."

With a flash of red hair, Aoma whirled around, slammed Shinn against the bulkhead with one hand, and drew a pistol from her jacket with the other to point it against his throat.

"Sorry? You're _sorry?_" she snarled, and Shinn almost shivered as he looked into her eyes and found pure, seething hatred. "I'm glad you're _sorry_, but that doesn't bring him _back_, now does it?" She tightened her grip on his jacket. "I knew him since we were both three months old, you bastard. We went to school together. We grew up together. We joined ZAFT together." She jammed the gun up into his throat. "And then we got assigned to the _Minerva_ and you spent two months taking him away from me, piece by piece, as he got more and more obsessed with defeating you, and then you finally killed him. So," her eyes flashed with fury, "I'm glad you're sorry, but it really doesn't mean a goddamn thing to me."

Shinn squirmed. "So you're going to kill me?"

Aoma scowled and shoved the gun back into her coat. "That's the worst part of this. If you were just an ordinary man on the street, you'd be dead by now. But you're not. You're," her face twisted into a sneer, "_important._" She pushed him back against the wall and let him go. "Don't speak to me. Or else next time I might not remember that you're _important_."

And with that, Aoma stormed off down the hallway, leaving Shinn behind.

—

**April 11th, CE 77 - ZAFT _Eternal_-class cruiser _Seraphim_, orbit of Earth**

"Well, well, well," the man laughed, "what have we here?"

His name was Varder Ehrmacht, and the green-haired man in the white ZAFT uniform drifted down the _Seraphim_'s bridge and came to a stop by the captain's chair. The straight-laced ZAFT Black Shirt serving as captain glanced up at him skeptically.

"Intel says they've got something of a reputation," he said. "Maybe not worth messing with."

"Oh, don't be a pussy, Evers," Varder chuckled, and motioned towards one of the bridge crew, who duly brought up on the auxiliary screen an image of the _Seraphim_'s next prey. "Fighting Naturals is one thing; fighting _us_ is something else."

"The _Minerva_ wasn't the flagship of ZAFT for nothing, commander," Evers protested. "It's going to take a lot to get rid of them. We don't have the combat strength for it."

Varder thoughtfully stroked his chin. Perhaps Evers had a point; the _Seraphim_ had a total of fourteen mobile suits crammed into its hangar, with little room to spare. And although a DOM Trooper and a GOUF Ignited were respectable machines in their own right, against the _Minerva_'s now eight Gundam units it was something else.

Unless...

"Well, you've seen the intel reports on them," said Varder with a confident grin. "So would you agree that they've got a fetish for protecting the weak and pitiful from the ruthless and strong?"

Evers arched a graying eyebrow. "Yes," he started dubiously. "Why?"

"I've got an idea."

"I hope it's better than the last one you had," a woman's voice put in from the back of the bridge. Varder and Evers both glanced up, and the former shot back a sarcastic smirk.

"You're still not over that?"

Lilith Ramsi alighted next to Varder and put on as sickening a pout as she could manage. "Three squads of MLA Murasames, all on my own, you jackass."

"You can't call your commanding officer a jackass. Says so in the manual." Varder turned back with a cheeky grin towards Evers. "Now then, captain, the _Fortuna_ should be prowling these parts not too far away, am I right?"

"They're in range of L4, but—"

"Perfect." He turned again. "Comm, get me a line to the _Fortuna_ and ask for Vice Marshal Yamato personally. I've got a proposition for him."

Presently, the auxiliary screen flickered to life with the skeptical face of the Vice Marshal of ZAFT, still facing something just off camera. "What is it, commander?"

Varder, Lilith, and Evers greeted him with dutiful salutes. "Vice Marshal Yamato," Varder began, "sorry to bother you, but we've found a target we thought you might be interested in."

Kira arched an eyebrow dubiously. "Aren't you on assignment to the DSSD's Troya Station?"

"Yes sir," Varder said, "but we've found the _Minerva_."

In an instant, Kira Yamato's natural eye flickered with something that nobody on the _Seraphim_'s bridge could identify, and he turned towards the camera.

"Go on."

—

**Yokosuka Naval Station, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

Actaeon Industries had its hooks in all sorts of mobile weapon development programs throughout the Earth Sphere, and the Earth Alliance's ceaseless hunger for new mobile weapons kept its coffers stuffed and its president, Duncan Luis Mockelberg, a happy man. But they turned out good products—including the mobile suit standing before Grey Saiba on the tarmac outside the _Charlemagne_.

The Regen Duel was yet another evolution of the venerable Duel Gundam from six years ago. It had been redesigned in Actaeon's expansive Luna Project, with lightweight new armor; it had a huge bazooka on its backpack; it had new thrusters and a new armor layout to give it more protection and mobility. In conjunction with the other new Actaeon machines from Arzachel Crater, it would be more than enough to take on that damned Twilight Gundam.

But there were others. There was Erin, standing at his side with a smile as she regarded her own new machine...and, coming down the tarmac, there were two more pilots.

Grey and Erin both promptly saluted the woman before them with the rank tabs of a lieutenant junior grade. She perfunctorily returned it and watched them remain at attention.

"Ensign Saiba and Ensign Gedelberg reporting, Lieutenant Maynard," Erin spoke up.

Kelly Maynard arched an eyebrow at them both and extended her hand for a customary handshake. "At ease. I'm going to be your new direct commanding officer." She nodded over her shoulder, and Grey fixed his eyes on the highly-amused-looking man with a goatee behind her. "Ensign Alterman over there is with us too. Once your partner is out of the infirmary, Ensign Saiba, we're going to organize a new combat team aboard the _Charlemagne_, using the Luna Project mobile weapons."

Grey looked back at the five machines with the faces of Gundams, and focused on the one that the engineers had called the Nix Providence. "Where did they get that one?"

"Wreckage from Solomon's Sword," Kelly explained, "and spare parts captured at Armory 1." She gestured to the Regen Duel. "But you, Ensign Saiba, have a manual to get reading. Your combat performance history is promising. I'm expecting a lot out of you."

His thoughts turned back towards the Angel of Death once more as he saluted and answered, "Yes ma'am."

—

The gleaming twilight sun washed over Yokosuka, and from the gantry overlooking the warship dock, Ivan Danilov cast a pensive glance over his titanic warship. The _Charlemagne_ lay in wait and under repair, and he could hardly wait to get back onto the battlefield—against the Earth Alliance's _real_ enemy. Regardless of their plans, ZAFT was unambiguously committing atrocities. Whether it was bait or something else, Danilov did not care; his soul yearned for the unambiguous battle his mighty warship deserved.

Standing on the gantry, he cast a glance over at Vera in the dying sunlight. His faithful executive officer seemed similarly excited about the prospect of facing the Earth Alliance's perennial enemy.

And yet, there still remained loose ends.

"What do you think the _Minerva_ will do, Vera?" he asked suddenly, catching her by surprise.

"If their actions against other Resistance units is any indication," she said after a moment's thought, "they'll probably not side with ZAFT. Even if the rest of the Resistance does."

"If the Resistance even acts as one unit anymore," Danilov added. "If there's anything left of them on Earth to do so."

Of course there were Resistance forces left on Earth. Not all of them had made their way into that deathtrap of Carpentaria. And surely some of them would decide to try to ally themselves with ZAFT. But what use could ZAFT have for the demoralized guerrillas that had only scored glancing blows against an Earth Alliance that had just decisively crushed them?

"So that raises an awkward potential problem for us," Danilov said. "The _Minerva_ deserted from ZAFT, and ZAFT's survivors do not forget that sort of thing. They're also launching attacks on civilians, which the _Minerva_ will probably not tolerate. So we have the possibility on our hands that the _Minerva_ could become the enemy of our enemy." He glanced over at Vera. "What would you do?"

"That doesn't make them not our enemy," Vera said darkly. "The instant ZAFT is dealt with, they'll be firing at us again."

Danilov looked to the sky and wondered. Until now he had fought the _Minerva_ as his enemy—indeed, that was the very purpose of his ship. But still, some part of him remained hopeful that the _Minerva_ would side with him.

After all, it was a long time since he had fought a battle where good and evil were clear. And Ivan Danilov missed that.

—

_Dropping them just like that, are you?_

Sven Cal Bayan ground his teeth as he stomped through the mobile suit bays of Yokosuka. That damned child just would not leave him alone.

_I will no longer need them,_ he shot back. _I required them to make up for the Noir's deficiencies against the Destiny. Now that the Crusader is on its way, I will no longer need additional bodies getting in my way during a fight._

The child skipped along at his side and laughed sardonically. _Two things, my incorrigible elder self,_ he chuckled. _First of all, you must have already forgotten that stuff they said in our training, about how having a team is important. And second_—

_As if I need your advice,_ Sven snarled back, and shook his head. That would not shut the child up, but he put his iron military discipline to work and trenchantly ignored the insufferable child. Why the buried vestiges of his conscience had taken on his own childhood face as its avatar was beyond him, but sooner or later he would root out and destroy those last remains, just as he would the last remnants of the Resistance.

At that, he turned his thoughts towards space. Operation _Typhoon_ had wiped out most of the Resistance's fighting strength on Earth...but in space they were intact, they had more professional leaders, they had better hiding places, they had more dangerous weapons...and now they had ZAFT introducing chaos. The Resistance thrived on chaos, as surely as it created it. ZAFT, for all its evils, still brought order—of its own twisted kind, but order nonetheless. ZAFT had leaders, the PLANTs had laws, the Coordinators had boundaries, and although they were his enemy, they were not his antithesis.

But not the Resistance. They were chaos itself, and they made a mockery of the carefully-constructed world for which the Alliance had paid in blood and treasure in two wars with ZAFT, both of them risking the very Earth itself. They would tear down this careful system and replace it with their own profane visions of the future.

ZAFT could be dealt with. ZAFT was a familiar enemy, an enemy that worked and thought on the same terms as himself. They wanted something and would take every step necessary to get it. But the Resistance was something else, and that Sven Cal Bayan swore to destroy. And the first step was to destroy their hero, the Gundam with the gleaming wings of light, the Destiny. Smashing the Resistance at Carpentaria had been a wonderful start—but now their hero needed to fall.

Sven clenched his teeth as he headed back for the _Charlemagne_. He would destroy the Resistance and restore order to the world...because, after all, that was why he existed this way now, as Captain Sven Cal Bayan of the Phantom Pain, and not as that little boy who wanted to see the stars. Because he was part of a system, and he had been given meaning.

He pushed the child back down.

—

"Why does it have to turn into a dog?" moaned Shams Coza as he studied the plans for his forthcoming Vanguard Gundam on a data pad with Mudie at his side. "Couldn't they leave me with some dignity?"

Mudie's lips twisted into a wicked grin. "It suits you," she said after moment. "On the pool table you're always my bitch."

"Oh, go eat a dick," Shams shot back.

All things considered, the Vanguard was not a bad-looking mobile suit. It was an evolution of the old Calamity Gundam, carrying a sniper rifle instead of that bazooka, and it had increased agility and even some limited atmospheric flight capability. It just also happened to transform into a quadruped mode that made Shams' flesh crawl. So what if a four-legged configuration was superior for ground combat? Two legs were all Shams Coza needed, damn it.

Of course, Mudie had lucked out with her nimble, graceful, thruster-laden Artemis Gundam. And they both knew that Sven was the real winner here with his imposing Crusader. Still, Sven would need Shams and Mudie on the battlefield. The Artemis had close combat specialties and the Vanguard had long range firepower. The Crusader could cover both, but it could not be in three places at once.

Shams thought back bitterly to his experience at Carpentaria, taken down by the Destiny in a brutal fight. Was that his lot in this war? Just getting his ass kicked again and again?

He glanced over at Mudie, watching her as she studied the Vanguard's specs. Not many things kept her attention like this, the capabilities of her battlefield partner's new machine, and at that Shams began to wonder.

And at _that_, he began to hope that the Artemis would be good enough—not to keep up with Sven, but to keep her safe.

—

**Heaven's Base, Iceland**

Duncan Luis Mockelberg had that supremely self-assured look on his face that never ceased to irk Lord Djibril, as the latter sat down with a handful of his longtime associates in Djibril's Heaven's Base office. Actaeon had just made a great deal of money off of its Luna Project machines, now at Yokosuka being loaded aboard the _Charlemagne_. The smug bastard was starting to forget that he had a more important task at hand than reeling in cash for Actaeon Industries.

Picking up on what Mockelberg seemed to be thinking, Lally McWilliams sat back with a small smile and a generous glass of red wine. "This isn't all bad, Djibril," he said with a smirk. "This war will boost our business substantially, and it'll give you an excuse to gain more power."

"And," added Bruno Azrael from across the table, "now we've got all the Coordinators in one place. We can wipe them out in one blow."

"And to think it's all come together this easily for us," chuckled Alwin Ritter. He raised his glass in a toast. "To Marshal Sunogachi."

"Gentlemen," Djibril said, and his voice sent shivers down the spines of his associates, wiping away their smiles. "I'm glad business is booming for you, but I fear you do not fully appreciate the precariousness of our situation. ZAFT has returned and their actions in the Earth Sphere of late have paralyzed space traffic, everywhere. And without freighters and shuttles, your products can only circulate on Earth." He paused sardonically. "And that isn't even counting whatever their _real_ plan is."

At the end of the table, Lucs Kohler raised his eyebrows. "Your lack of confidence is rather disturbing, Djibril."

"It's not a lack of confidence so much as it is a realistic assessment of our present situation." He fixed the room's occupants with an imperious stare, a stare that reminded them all who was really in charge. "ZAFT undoubtedly means to destroy us all. The Requiem and the battle at Solomon's Sword did not destroy all of them, and those that survive want revenge. If we are to defeat them, I will require your full cooperation. No cutting corners, no stashing things away, no bickering, no turf wars. We're in this together, gentlemen. Let's make sure we make it out together as well."

As his tired old associates began to bicker amongst themselves, Djibril sat back. There were other threats too, of course, threats he would have to mention sooner or later—but the mention of ZAFT's attacks on space commerce had gotten them all stirred up. And nothing worked to move the gears of power like money.

—

**Battleship _Minerva_, Debris Belt**

"Well, we haven't been shot at so far," Burt said cheerfully, and Roxy and Abbey both stared distastefully at him. "Hey, I'm taking that to mean it's a good thing. We're all getting along. Right?"

"Sure, whatever," Roxy answered, and punctuated herself with a slug of beer, pausing only to glare at the straw. Beer was not meant to travel through straws.

"The Vedlow Fleet is too professional for that," Abbey put in, and sat back in the captain's chair. "We'll have—"

"Wait a minute," Burt interrupted. "Heat signature from 9000 out! Judging by the database, I'd say it's an _Eternal_-class cruiser. And..." He trailed for a moment in disbelief. "IFF is ZAFT and it's heading straight for us!"

Abbey felt her blood run hot. So here came their first battle with their old comrades.

"Roxy, recall the captain and the others from the _Star One_," she said, "and issue Condition Red. We have a reunion on our hands."

—

To be continued...


	3. Phase 03: Widowmaker

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note: Well. This one was kinda late. Sorry 'bout that.

—

Phase 03 - Widowmaker

—

**April 11th, CE 77 - Debris Belt**

As the Twilight Gundam rocketed into space, Emily steeled herself for battle. Out there was a whole squadron of ZAFT mobile suits, and at their head through the magnified scope she could see the crimson-painted machines with monoeyes blazing in the darkness of space. At their head was a DOM Trooper and a GOUF Ignited, both in the same flamboyant crimson. She fixed her sights on them and prepared her long-range cannon.

"Aoma and some of her mobile suits will be joining us," Athrun's voice put in. "Keep the enemies boxed in."

Emily clenched her fists around the Twilight's controls. Her new green ZAFT flight suit felt unnatural over her skin, an uncomfortable barrier between herself and her machine. She closed the visor and pushed the thoughts from her mind. Better this than dying in space.

The DOM and GOUF peeled off from their formation and opened fire, and the _Minerva_'s Gundams split their own ranks and darted apart. Emily charged forward and let loose a shimmering blast from her long-range cannon. The two mobile suits broke ranks and returned fire in spades, with the DOM blasting back with its Gigalauncher's beam cannon and the GOUF spraying the Twilight with beam gun fire. Emily ground her teeth and slammed on the brakes to throw up her beam shield; the two mobile suits darted in, beam weapons blazing. The Twilight whirled over them both and leveled off its rifle—but an instant later, the DOM Trooper was there.

The hulking mobile suit slammed its free left hand down onto the Twilight's arm, holding its rifle wide of its target, and Emily blinked in surprise as her auxiliary screen flickered to life and she found herself staring into the eager silver eyes of a green-haired man in a white ZAFT flight suit.

"So _you're_ that 'Angel of Death' all these Naturals are cowering over!" he cackled. "I didn't expect you to be a cute teenager, though. That might make things," he snickered, "_awkward._"

Emily's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "And who are you?"

The DOM leveled off its Gigalauncher in the Twilight's face. "Mine is a name you'd better get used to hearing," he laughed. "I'm the Widowmaker of ZAFT, the one and only Varder Ehrmacht—and I expect a worthy battle!"

With a thundering crash, the DOM fired a bazooka shell into the Twilight's face and sent it reeling under a pall of smoke.

"Now then, 'Angel of Death,'" Varder cried with a wide and wicked grin, and the DOM moved its Gigalauncher to its left hand—and drew its beam saber with a flash, "_show me what you can do!_"

The DOM's monoeye flashed and the red mobile suit charged.

—

"Well," Rau Le Creuset said with a flourish, "I suppose our allegiance has been chosen for us."

The Legend Gundam roared down beneath a blazing red beam blast from a crimson Gunner ZAKU Warrior. At its side, the Force Impulse Gundam darted to the right and leveled off its beam rifle to open fire. By the Gunner ZAKU, a Slash ZAKU Warrior and Slash ZAKU Phantom darted in to deflect the shots with their shields, and returned fire with a storm of beam Gatling fire.

"Why don't you put those DRAGOONs to use," Aoma muttered, and cut herself short as a volley of rifle blasts from the two Slash ZAKUs plowed into her shield.

"Not ideal in the Debris Belt," answered Rau. "Too many narrow spaces and unexpected motion from the wreckage." He pulled back, lined up his DRAGOON units, and let loose a punishing salvo of his own, forcing the ZAKUs to break formation. "But I can still do _that._"

"Wonderful." The Impulse charged behind its shield and fired back, focusing on the Gunner ZAKU—only to see the ZAKU Warrior dart into its back and deflect the shots with its own shield. The Gunner ZAKU leapt up and fired again to force the Impulse back on the defensive. Rau lined up for another blast, but the ZAKU Phantom beat him to it and rammed into the Legend with one of its spiked shoulder-mounted shields.

"I see they've improved," grunted Rau, and he threw the Legend back to avoid a vicious sweep from the ZAKU Phantom's beam axe. "Commander Vedlow, perhaps you should change equipment."

"In the Debris Belt?" scoffed Aoma. "Not likely."

Rau turned his eyes back towards the charging ZAKU Phantom.

_Well, I'll give you credit for this, Valentine. You've done more with them than Dullindal ever did..._

—

Shinn Asuka ground his teeth as the three ZAKUs danced in between the vast pieces of debris and showered his Destiny Gundam with beam fire. On one of the larger pieces of wreckage, the Gaia Gundam lunged up from the debris and let loose a salvo of its own; the ZAKUs deflected its shots with their shields and pulled back, and with a crash the Blaze ZAKU Warrior put a beam shot through the wreckage that blew it apart and sent the Gaia hurtling backward.

"They're different...!" snarled Stella.

"I'll say," Shinn grunted. "Stella, cover me!"

The Destiny rocketed forward and activated its beam wings with a flash. The ZAKUs opened fire, but afterimages filled the black sky as Shinn snaked a path through the wreckage towards the Blaze ZAKU Phantom in the lead—

Instead, as Shinn drew his sword and brought it down with a scream, the ZAKU Phantom jinked to the side and let the Destiny rush by. With a crash, it drew a beam tomahawk with its left hand, and only a timely counter-swing from Shinn saved the Destiny's left arm. The Slash ZAKU Warrior came down from above, twirling its beam axe behind it with its monoeye flashing—

One thunderous crash later, the Gaia rammed into the charging ZAKU with its shoulder and threw it far off course. The staggering ZAKU swung back wildly with its axe but caught nothing. Stella leveled off her rifle for a killing shot—but the Blaze ZAKU Warrior darted into the path and deflected it with its shield.

"Well, this is gonna be fun," Shinn grunted, as the sparks flew and the ZAKU Phantom pressed down harder. "Having this much trouble with just three ZAKUs..."

—

Metal straining and sparks flashing, the Infinite Justice Gundam pounded its beam sabers against a Blaze ZAKU Phantom's beam tomahawk. The ZAKU Phantom darted back and unleashed a salvo of missiles directly into the Justice's face and sent it staggering back; an instant later it burst through the smoke, tomahawk raised high—

And then, with a reverberating crash, the Savior dropped into its path and drop-kicked it across the face. Viveka leveled off her cannons to finish it off, but instead a Gunner ZAKU Warrior cut her off with a pulsing red beam cannon blast slammed against the Savior's beam shield, and a Slash ZAKU Warrior came down next with a punishing overhead axe blow.

"Athrun, were they always this good in ZAFT?" she grunted.

The Justice somersaulted over the Savior and pounded the ZAKUs' shields with beam cannon fire to force them back.

"This isn't too surprising," Athrun answered. "The ones who survived Solomon's Sword were either very lucky or very good." The Justice's eyes flashed combatively as the ZAKUs moved back on the defensive. The Gunner ZAKU pummeled the Justice's beam shield with a pulsating blast; the Savior answered it in spades, but the ZAKUs darted apart and opened fire with a barrage of beam rifle shots.

Athrun ground his teeth as the ZAKUs moved in again. Of course, good or lucky, they would have to be better than this.

—

A storm of beam blasts rained down on the Chaos and Abyss Gundams from a Slash ZAKU Phantom. A Gunner ZAKU Warrior leveled off its cannon and opened fire, forcing the two Gundams apart. Sting seized the opportunity to fire his gunbarrels upward and send them arcing back down to pummel the two ZAKUs—but a moment later, the Blaze ZAKU Warrior slid in front of him and opened fire. The Abyss let loose a torrent of beam fire, but the ZAKUs expertly darted behind wreckage and let the blasts soar by them.

"That's getting pretty fucking annoying!" Auel cried, and the Abyss blasted forward and ignited the beam tip of its lance. Sting brought in his gunbarrels in front of the Abyss and fired off a salvo of missiles; the ZAKUs dodged them easily and the ZAKU Phantom stormed forward. Auel jerked back the controls in surprise and threw his lance up to defend, just as the ZAKU brought down its lance.

"_You're mine!_" Sting screamed, and the Chaos rocketed up over the Abyss with its beam rifle leveled off—

Instead, the two ZAKU Warriors opened fire and forced Sting to throw the Chaos to the side. The ZAKU Phantom seized the opportunity to surge forward and hurl the Abyss back before it. Auel ground his teeth and squeezed off a Callidus shot—the ZAKU ducked beneath it, and the Gunner ZAKU forced the blue Gundam back on the defensive with a shimmering blast of its own.

"Okay, now you're pissing me off!" Auel snapped. "Sting, come on! I've had it!"

The Abyss and Chaos flashed their eyes and charged again.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Malik, I'm leaving the evasive maneuvers to you," Meyrin said as the _Minerva_ rattled and missiles exploded under fire from the ship's CIWS emplacements. She glanced up at the auxiliary screen. "Ali, are you in position yet?"

"They're using the debris pretty well," he answered. "Maybe you should try that positron cannon of that yours."

Meyrin glanced back at the battlefield, where the pitch-black _Seraphim_ had its angelic wings spread and its guns warmed up and ready. Of course, it would also put her own mobile suits at risk as the blast of positrons set off all that debris.

"Chen, prepare the Neidhardts instead," she ordered. "Tristans and Isolde, target the enemy and fire on my mark. We'll distract them until the _Star One_ is in position." Her eyes flashed determinedly. "_Fire!_"

The Isolde boomed and the Tristans flashed to life, sending shells and pulsing beams plowing into the debris surrounding the _Seraphim_. The black warship disappeared amid a writhing storm of fireballs, and Meyrin furrowed her brow as she saw the elegant vessel's hull in silhouette amid the flames. Of course—ZAFT wouldn't let something like that stop them.

"Chen, get the missiles ready," she said. "It'll take more than that."

—

"I gotta say, kid, you're the coolest sixteen-year-old I've ever met!" cackled Varder Ehrmacht, as the DOM Trooper brought its saber down with a crash onto the Twilight's blade. Emily ground her teeth and kicked open the thrusters to surge forward and throw the DOM back—but as she closed in for the kill, the DOM somersaulted effortlessly over her head. "Very nice! Excellent form!"

A feeling of danger rippled up her spine and she hurled the Twilight to the side—just as that red GOUF Ignited came down with an overhead sword hack. The GOUF snapped up its left arm and fired forward its heat rod. Emily yelped in surprise as it curled around the Twilight's left arm; the GOUF yanked her closer, seized her right arm from behind, and held her up as a trophy for the DOM Trooper.

"Where did you come from—?" Emily grunted.

A woman's face appeared on the auxiliary screen next, framed by a red ZAFT flight suit and smirking triumphantly. "Pleased to meet you, little miss angel," she answered. "Lilith Ramsi," the GOUF slammed its foot against the Twilight's back and pushed it up towards the DOM, "and I've been looking forward to doing this for a long time!" The GOUF's monoeye flashed. "Varder, quit hitting on her and kill her!"

"You just get way too possessive." The DOM pointed its saber at the Twilight's cockpit with a flourish. "Well, angel girl, it's been fun, but I _do_ have business to attend to and I can't have you messing around with it." The DOM's monoeye lit up and the mobile suit went charging forward. "So I'll make it quick!"

Emily's eyes flickered as she saw her chance. "_You can try!_"

A blinding flash of light flooded out as the Twilight activated its beam wings and sliced off both of the GOUF's arms at the elbow. With a blast of thruster exhaust, she hurled the maimed GOUF back and roared up into the DOM's face—and before it could react, she ripped off its right arm with her left-hand palm cannon and pounded the Twilight's knee into the DOM's torso. Varder let out a yelp of surprise and threw his wounded machine to the left as Emily stabbed forward for the kill.

"The hell was that?" Varder cried; the Twilight closed in with roaring engines and Emily brought her saber down with a scream, nearly taking off the DOM's head.

"That might've worked on the pilots you've fought before," Emily snarled, and went charging after the DOM, "but I've killed better men than you!"

Varder scowled and glanced at the DOM's cockpit instruments. He turned his eyes towards the GOUF, nodded, and let loose a combat flare. Emily ducked beneath it and kept on the attack—but an instant later, a bazooka shell slammed into her mobile suit's shoulder, and the next thing she saw through the smoke and fire was the DOM escaping with the crippled GOUF.

As they made their escape, Emily sat back in the Twilight's cockpit seat with a sigh. Another war, another bunch of enemies.

—

Rau Le Creuset frowned as he watched the ZAKUs drop combat flares and race into the Debris Belt. He recognized that pattern—it was one of ZAFT's retreat signals.

"If they were meaning to destroy us," he said quietly, "then this must not have been their main effort. The real blow must be coming later." He reached out ahead and found the dense presences of the _Seraphim_ and its crew, and the human presences slowly moving towards it—as many now as had entered the battle in the first place. Was this bait?

He could feel Kira somewhere near L4. The gears turned and the pieces clicked into place—so this _was_ a trap. Bait for a trap, at least. The _Seraphim_ was leading the _Minerva_ into a confrontation with Kira.

ZAFT surely had its reasons beyond the sentimental to destroy the _Minerva_. They were the Resistance's most famous and effective unit, and they would surely fight the atrocities ZAFT's forces were already committing. But surely Kira had a more personal reason for involving himself in this battle...

Rau grinned at the thought.

_I'm looking forward to seeing what Valentine has done with you, Kira..._

—

**Resistance **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Star One**_

"That was bait for a trap," Ali said quietly as Aoma drifted back onto the _Star One_'s bridge. "That must be why they retreated so quickly. Their mobile suits were holding their own and the ship looks like it got away unscathed. They must be looking for a chase."

Aoma glanced up at the tactical map. The _Seraphim_ was escaping at flank speed towards L4—and, most interestingly, the DSSD's Troya Research Station. Aoma remembered that place well. She had managed to negotiate for some supplies there, in exchange for her technical experts' assistance in hiding the station's Coordinator staff members from the Alliance. DSSD would continue its research regardless of Lord Djibril's anti-Coordinator policies, but that didn't mean the practical world never came knocking at Troya.

And, judging by the _Seraphim_'s projected course, it was bringing a battering ram.

"If this _is_ a trap," Aoma said, "then I don't see where it is. There's only one other ZAFT unit around in this sector." She furrowed her brow. "Unless Mirage Colloid on warships is suddenly way more fashionable."

Ali studied the map for a moment. "If ZAFT is attacking Troya, what will we do?"

That was a question that made Aoma's stomach turn. Troya had treated her as well as it could, and she didn't want to just leave them to ZAFT's dubious auspices, if that was what the _Seraphim_ was going there for—but what else could she do?

She glanced over at the _Minerva_, and her stomach turned again.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Debris Belt**

The mechanics were swarming like ants around the smoldering wounds of the GOUF Ignited and DOM Trooper, and Varder cast a tired glance at his maimed machine. Perhaps that Angel of Death had a reason for her sterling reputation.

He landed deftly on the hangar gantry next to a supremely annoyed-looking Lilith and Evers. "Well," Varder said, and put on a confident smirk, "the good news is we've got their attention. Now we head for Troya and make that the bait."

"This is way too complicated," complained Evers. "We could just as easily ambush them somewhere in the Debris Belt—"

"Not yet," Lilith interrupted. "We have to make sure they follow us. Attacking Troya and escaping with that prototype of theirs is as good an excuse as any." She glanced back at Varder. "So what did you think?"

"I'm impressed," he answered with a grin. "At least she earned her reputation. Although our fight wasn't long enough for me to really get a handle on her capabilities..."

Lilith arched an eyebrow. "Sounds like you want to do more than just fight her."

"Pervert." Varder turned back towards Evers. "Get us moving towards Troya. We have a schedule to keep."

—

**April 12th, CE 77 - Yokosuka Naval Installation, Japan, Republic of East Asia**

Merau Seraux emerged from the infirmary doorway with a bandage wrapped around her head and the most utterly pissed-off look Grey Saiba had ever seen cross her face. Someone had not quite forgiven the Zamzazar crew for swatting her out of the sky like a mosquito. Good thing they were dead, or they'd have Merau to worry about.

"If it's any consolation," Grey said, "they disabled my machine too."

Merau did not look consoled. She turned in surprise towards Erin. "And, err, I don't believe we've met..."

"Erin Gedelberg," the black-haired ensign supplied with what Grey did not fail to notice was a sort of anxious smile. "There's a new machine waiting for you too. We're going to set up a new combat team—"

"So I've heard," Merau said. "I'm sorry to cut you off, but they only kicked me out of the infirmary because I was awake and they needed space for wounded." She gestured to the bandage on her head. "Still concussed."

"Yeah," Grey filled in, "at Carpentaria we were engaging the Twilight and a Zamzazar showed up. Knocked us both out of the sky." He nodded to Merau. "Some sense of teamwork we've got."

"The mobile armor crews might act that way," Erin said as she straightened up awkwardly, "but we won't."

"Great," Merau grunted. "I'm heading back to my bunk. Later."

The blonde pilot turned and made for the _Charlemagne_, leaving Erin and Grey behind. Erin crossed her arms. "Pleasant."

"She has a concussion," Grey pointed out.

"I know." Erin shrugged. "I'm sorry, I want to make a good impression."

Grey eyed her carefully for a moment and decided that he could call bullshit on that later.

—

"Wow, ol' Wings of Light back there sure didn't leave much," chuckled Irene Ramos. She stood on a platform with Sven overlooking the tarmac where workers were unloading the useless wreckage that remained of the long-suffering Strike Noir. Sven watched it all dispassionately. The Noir had served its purpose, but it was no longer sufficient—and a better machine awaited him anyway.

"What have you dug up on Director Oldendorf?" Sven asked suddenly.

Irene merely shrugged. "Not much more than I've already told you. If he's got anymore information on Project Evolution, he's hidden it somewhere that I haven't found yet. And I've hacked my way through his entire computer three times now, and scoured his home and his office for other sources. I got nothing else."

"Really," Sven muttered, and fixed his eyes on the ruined Noir's dark, dead eyes. "Is Director Oldendorf involved in the Crusader project?"

"No. Why, you wanna meet him?"

Sven crossed his arms. "We have much to discuss."

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

The _Minerva_.

They were near. Kira Yamato could feel them, sitting in his office aboard the _Fortuna_, feeling their presences across the Earth Sphere. He could feel them. The familiar contours of Athrun Zala, Shinn Asuka...and Rau Le Creuset.

So Rau was still alive. Kira clenched his mismatched fists. That was a loose end he would have to clear up. The _Minerva_ had clustered his greatest foes into one place. How convenient.

He struggled to push down the anger. The anger would cloud his mind and foil his judgment. He was even beginning to fear that accepting Ehrmacht's offer to set up this trap was a mistake. What if he had not improved enough? What if they had new weapons? What if the plan didn't work out? What if he lost control? Everything depended on him remaining in control.

But Athrun had killed Fllay. Shinn had stood against him at the final battle of the Junius War. Rau had failed him. And the _Minerva_...yes, they were traitors.

He pushed the rage back down. It would serve its purpose in due time...but not yet.

—

This was always the hardest part.

Kara Guinness drifted by the railing in the _Fortuna_'s interior observation deck and stared up at the quiet blue planet before her. She still felt a primal connection to the planet Earth. How could she not? It had been the cradle of humankind, before some of them had reached for the future and become Coordinators. And even though it was covered in those vermin Naturals, it was still the mother Earth.

Soon, of course, it would be cleansed.

It wasn't genocide that she was quietly hoping for. It was the logical step that too many Coordinator leaders had been too weak or too foolish to take. Patrick Zala had sort of stumbled in that direction, but he had not acknowledged reality. He had fallen short. Marshal Sunogachi would not. The Requiem was the horror that proved her words true. The greatest problem before the Coordinators as they faced the prospect of return and reconstruction was not the birth rate problem—they could deal with _that_—but the Naturals. The Alliance. They were jealous and greedy and cruel. They saw the Coordinators, saw their betters, and through Blue Cosmos and the indifference of the masses they tried to destroy the rightful heirs of the human future.

That was all true, but what made it work for Kara Guinness, FAITH-appointed soldier of ZAFT, was the sting of her family's absence. Had even her sister survived the Requiem, it wouldn't have hurt so badly. But October 2 had been one of the first PLANTs struck by the Requiem's blast, and Lord Djibril's light of death knew no mercy.

In that sense, it was revenge. The Naturals needed to be put in a position where they could never threaten the Coordinators again. They needed to be weakened. One of their chief advantages over ZAFT was numerical—so that would be reduced and the world would drown in blood. They would know what it was like to lose their entire nation—but because they were the inferior strain of humanity, the branch that would wither and die as the Coordinators rose towards the sun, they would never rise up and take vengeance.

After all, Kara mused as she looked at the Earth, blood needed to be repaid with blood. These last three years had been hard. The survivors had found solace only in each other and in this moment. But it was for all mankind's sake—yes, even the Naturals—that the Coordinators would secure their existence and rebuild their nation.

For the future, as Marshal Sunogachi had told them, was theirs alone.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

"That was different," Auel Neider muttered as he and Sting drifted down the _Minerva_'s corridors and towards the hangar. "Never seen Athrun and Batman actually sort of get along."

Sting snickered; making up nicknames for Rau was way more fun than it had any right to be. "Yeah, well, it won't last, Athrun will go back to hating his guts by the end of the day." They rounded a corner and made for the hangars. "Anyways, did you hear? Terminal says their engineers have blueprints drawn up for some upgrades."

"What, real upgrades, not the 'put a beam shield on it and call it an upgrade' shit they did at Carpentaria?"

"Real upgrades." Sting pumped his fist in anticipation. "I can hardly wait. The Chaos has been getting kinda old."

"About fucking time," Auel sneered. "Those ZAFT bastards were better than I thought. Gonna have to keep up with them somehow."

Sting nodded solemnly as Auel keyed open the hangar doors. They had done well enough in that abortive battle with the ZAFT unit, but anymore fights like that and he would be getting too close to failure.

—

Shinn watched absentmindedly as Stella Loussier cleaned out the humble aquarium by her bunk, with its inhabitant in a small plastic bag filled with water nearby. Fortunately, Stella's invincible fish seemed unperturbed by the lack of little things like gravity—which was more than he could say about other people, and idly remembered watching Emily gracefully go sailing into a wall the other day.

Now they were in space, and now they faced ZAFT—and now, as Stella cleaned out the fish tank, Shinn faced the ghosts.

Luna he could deal with. Luna's death had hurt, but the pain of her loss had dulled with time. She hadn't quite gone out on her own terms, but he still had that nagging feeling that it was the sort of death she wouldn't have minded so much, if it hadn't meant leaving Meyrin alone. And Meyrin was doing alright on her own anyway.

No, it was Rey's death that still hurt, as much as Kika and Mayu and his parents. He had been angry—and how could he not, because it was Rey who had killed Luna—and had struck down his best friend from his ZAFT days and gone on and fought like a lion. And he had not forgiven Rey for killing Luna.

But that didn't take away the pain.

They were Newtypes, after all. They were supposed to understand each other. Rey was supposed to understand why Shinn had deserted, why Shinn had put Stella above Dullindal's schemes, why Shinn was on the other side of the battlefield at Solomon's Sword.

He closed his eyes. But would it have mattered if he had saved Rey instead of killed him? Rey needed those drugs. He was dying. He could very well have been dead by now anyway, had he not died at Solomon's Sword.

But Rey was his friend, and at a moment in his life where he hadn't had any friends. Rey had been there to show him the way. The way had gone to someplace dark and evil, and that was where Rey had wanted to go. That was what Rey had wanted Shinn to help create.

But friends didn't have to be right to be friends.

—

"ZAFT's combat training regimen has likely changed to compensate for ZAFT's reduced numbers with increased skill," Rau Le Creuset explained in the _Minerva_'s computer room, with Viveka and a displeased-looking Athrun at the terminal before him. "The unit we encountered is also probably a special forces outfit with special weapons and training. The _Seraphim_ was one of the _Eternal_-class ships assigned to such units after the Valentine War. I commanded one myself."

Athrun glanced at him with obvious annoyance. "I don't suppose you'd know who was in command of the _Seraphim_."

At that, Rau merely shrugged. "If I recall correctly, it was Commander Svante. He never had a predilection for all-red mobile suits, however, so I rather doubt he's in command of the _Seraphim_ now."

Viveka glanced between the two ZAFT veterans. "So basically, they're all going to be dicks like those red ones were?"

"Essentially," answered Rau.

"Dammit."

"But not to worry," Rau added, and reached over her shoulder to throw a switch on the console. "Our next destination, after all, is Terminal."

Athrun forced down his distaste at the idea of Rau Le Creuset inside the Resistance's last sanctuary. They would have to get there first.

—

Meyrin Hawke sat back on the bridge and quietly wished she was back on Earth, or on a colony, where there was gravity. That way she could sit back with a nice hot cup of soup and let the tension melt away. It just didn't have the same feeling in a plastic bottle with a straw.

The messages had arrived from Terminal. They could not complete any new mobile suits without the core pieces and the engines of the _Minerva_'s existing mobile suits. That meant she would have to get her ship to Terminal and spend several days in dock, as the technicians there put together new and improved mobile suits out of her existing units. That would not be fun, but it would be necessary.

She thought back to ZAFT, and their fairly unambiguous statement through that black _Eternal_-class ship. There was never any real doubt in her mind to begin with that she would be on the opposite side of the battlefield as ZAFT. She had Shinn Asuka in her retinue and the _Minerva_ had deserted and attempted to attack Solomon's Sword during that final battle, and the Cosmic Era was not a time of forgiveness and forgetting of grudges.

Besides, they were also intentionally targeting civilians.

"Burt," she said suddenly, "bring up the projection of that black ZAFT ship's course."

The image duly appeared on the auxiliary screen, and Meyrin studied it again. It was heading for Lagrange Point 4, but she wracked her brain and found nothing that ZAFT would have of interest at L4. Armory 1 had been there, but it had been dismantled in CE 75. There were several civilian colony clusters there, and the thought that the ZAFT ship was targeting one of them turned her stomach...but what else?

Meyrin sat up with a start. There was something else there—the DSSD's research station, and—

"Roxy," she said, "send out a line to the _Star One_. We've got a problem."

—

"Can't even get a little dignity from my enemies," Emily muttered, as she sat in the Twilight's cockpit and tiredly worked on its system settings, with the brick-like manual in her lap. Varder Ehrmacht, as he had called himself, was something of a jerk, she had decided. She couldn't shake the eerie feeling that he had been hitting on her during their abortive battle, and that was not an idea Emily was willing to consider. They had been trying to kill each other. It was _weird._

Viveka, of course, had told her to "kick his creepy ass" the next time they met in battle. Emily took solace in that. Varder Ehrmacht was a bizarre sort of enemy, but one she could deal with. He had taken her by surprise in an unfamiliar environment, but she could handle him, and his little hanger-on Lilith as well.

The one she worried about, then, was the brooding presence far from here, far from L4, far from herself. That one, the one Athrun and Shinn had identified as a man named Kira, was something different—and singularly unsettling. He was not as powerful a Newtype as Shinn or herself, but he had strength all the same—and anger, and pain, and fear, and sorrow. And all of it was walled up like a fortress between a stony determination. Somehow she imagined him to be a leader—perhaps _the_ leader, the one in charge of ZAFT.

Athrun and Shinn always spiked in emotion whenever they mentioned him, or reached out and found his presence. He was their enemy, not hers—but she would probably have to face him anyway.

An enemy like that...she didn't have that. Everyone she hated as much as Shinn hated him was dead. Everyone she felt such pain for as Athrun felt was gone. She had never had a rival like they had in this Kira. And they weren't talking about him.

She turned her thoughts and senses back towards Kira and idly wondered.

—

**April 13th, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

"We're about to enter range of Troya," Evers said, and glanced over his shoulder towards the upper seat, where sat a supremely triumphant-looking Varder Ehrmacht—triumphant even though the battle had not yet begun.

"Well, I guess that would be my cue," he said with a shrug. "You've got the bridge, Evers. Don't screw anything up."

"Of course, sir," Evers muttered, and turned back towards the colony ahead. Damned cocky bastard. But he pushed the thoughts from his mind, because up ahead lay the DSSD Troya Research Station—and even better, there lay their prototype.

The Stargazer. It was the DSSD's prototype for an unmanned exploration machine, built onto the frame of a mobile suit and designed for continuous operation on a geological timescale light-years from human civilization. According to the intel reports, it had an advanced AI for handling the machine so far out beyond the human frontier. And to get it there, it had that huge ring-shaped machine on its back—the "Voiture Lumiere" laser propulsion system.

They had failed to capture that at Mars. The Austral Colony had mastered it first and built it into that Delta Astray, which then got destroyed by the nuclear attack at the colony. The MLA and Vargas's creatures built the second one, but it was destroyed in battle. Both times it had been the Vice Marshal's failure. This time it would be Commander Ehrmacht who would acquire the technology for them. The ZAKU Goliath, after all, demanded only the best, and one of Ehrmacht's specialties during the war had been the capture of advanced technology and important information from enemy strongholds.

Evers sneered in contempt. Troya had a slew of modified Civilian Astray mobile suits. They would probably fight back, using those. It would be like that pitiful sideshow of a Martian war all over again. And the DSSD, according to intel, had become something of a haven for Coordinators stranded in the Earth Sphere and besieged by the vicious policies of Lord Djibril. There were Coordinators on Troya's research and construction staff. They would undoubtedly get caught in the crossfire.

But they had refused to turn over the Stargazer or their research to agents that had preceded the ZAFT fleet. They were traitors.

Evers narrowed his eyes. There was only one thing to do with traitors.

"_Seraphim_, flank speed. Prepare for combat."

—

To be continued...


	4. Phase 04: The Stargazer

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 04 - The Stargazer

—

**April 13th, CE 77 - DSSD Troya Research Station, Lagrange Point 4**

Panic spread throughout the station as the news came in that the approaching ship was displaying an IFF from ZAFT—and not the Earth Alliance.

Sweeping up her possessions from her workstation, Selene McGriff tried to still her pounding heart. The Alliance was one thing. She was a Coordinator, and that made her their target, but the DSSD could deal with the Alliance. They always had, through a mixture of bribery, legal chicanery, and lying. That strategy had worn thin with the Alliance's patience, especially since the DSSD relied on the Alliance for the lion's share of its funding now—but it could be averted. The gears of government had rotten parts in them that could be exploited. There were cracks, where herself and the other Coordinator staff members at Troya could hide.

But not from ZAFT.

She glanced up at the feeling of a gentle hand on her shoulder, and the young man standing over her smiled reassuringly.

"They _are_ still Coordinators," he said. "We're their people. This may not be so bad."

Selene smiled back as he left, decidedly not reassured. Poor Sol was only a test pilot and kept his head buried in the Stargazer's AI. He didn't know that ZAFT agents had arrived at Troya a week ago demanding the Stargazer, or at least its blueprints and research data, and Selene didn't have the heart to spoil that illusion for him. Reality could do that.

She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder and headed for the locker where her space suit waited. So far the plan was to sequester the station's Coordinators in an escape pod, that would then hide itself amid the space junk that drifted by the station and slip away. But that depended on the other station staff stalling that ZAFT warship long enough to—

The station lurched back and the decks shuddered, and as Selene slammed into the floor she realized with a burst of horror that ZAFT wasn't going to wait.

"So that's how it's going to be," she grunted. "In that case..."

Selene got back up and headed for the locker room again. That space suit was still waiting, but she sure wasn't going for the escape pod afterwards.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

"Keep your fire away from anything that looks like a warehouse or a hangar," Varder instructed, the DOM Trooper humming and eager for battle. "We've blown it on two shots at capturing an intact Voiture Lumiere system. Let's not screw up the third."

"Yes sir!" his pilots answered, and the twelve red ZAKUs rocketed towards the station. Varder smirked as the opposition kindly arrayed itself before him. To a man, they were more of those obnoxious Civilian Astrays, apparently modified to suit the DSSD's needs.

"How disappointing," Lilith said with a sigh, and her crimson GOUF fell into formation at the DOM's side. "More of those stupid Civilian Astrays. I had my fill of those back at Mars."

"Yeah," Varder agreed, "but not all is lost. The _Minerva_ should be following us, if my hunch is right."

"What, you want a rematch that badly?"

"Sort of. In the meantime, however..." He threw a switch on the DOM's console. "All units, no quarter! _Commence attack!_"

The ZAKUs opened fire, and Varder sped into battle with a laugh.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, orbit of Earth**

"So I guess you were right," Roxy spoke up on the _Minerva_'s bridge. Meyrin glanced up from the captain's chair, to find Roxy pointing at her console's screen. "Distress signal from DSSD Troya. They're saying a ZAFT warship is attacking the station and won't respond to hails."

Meyrin bit back a curse. Surely ZAFT was trying to capture something there, because the DSSD was involved in all sorts of projects that would have military applications. The auxiliary screen came to life with Aoma's face on it, looking frustrated.

"I assume you got Troya's signal?" she started. Meyrin nodded. "The _Star One_ is heading at top speed for Troya. You're coming with?"

"Of course."

"It's the _Seraphim_ again, judging by the description Troya gave. Are you ready?"

Meyrin cracked a smile. "Do you have to ask?"

"I guess not. _Star One_, out."

The screen went dark and Meyrin glanced up at Roxy. "Take us to Condition Red and get our mobile suits ready for launch. We hit Troya's airspace in approximately thirty minutes."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Pacific Ocean**

Kaohsiung had a mass driver that had just been repaired last year, after damage during the Junius War and by terrorists in the current war. Only a mass driver could get the mighty _Charlemagne_ to space, after all. Ivan Danilov sat back on the bridge of his great warship and watched as the calm blue waters of the Pacific Ocean rolled beneath the vast dark bulk of his vessel's hull.

The DSSD's Troya Research Station at Lagrange Point 4 had sent out a distress signal on all channels not long ago. Danilov had heard about it, but there was no way his vessel would be in space in time to do anything about it—and there were probably no nearby Alliance units willing to help either. The Alliance's relationship with the DSSD was testy at best. Lord Djibril and his minions suspected them of harboring Coordinators, who were supposed to be turned over to the Phantom Pain. For their protection, of course. The DSSD had always managed to rebuff the Alliance, however, and Djibril and his cronies had always had greater priorities than a research outfit whose primary concern was finding ways to explore the depths of space. Lord Djibril had no cares about the depths of space—not when there were wars to win here.

Danilov sighed thoughtfully. What could ZAFT want with the DSSD and their research? The DSSD was researching propulsion systems—what would ZAFT need that for?

Soon enough the _Charlemagne_ would be in space. They would meet up with a _Cornelius_-class supply ship, the _George C. Marshall_, and receive three new machines for the _Charlemagne_'s three best pilots. And then...well, then the war would begin again for Ivan Danilov and his warship.

—

"There really isn't much to tell," Grey said awkwardly as he, Erin, and Merau strode down the _Charlemagne_'s corridors and made for the crew lounge. "I mean, honestly, our fights with the Twilight don't last too long."

"That was in those standard Dark Windams," Erin answered, with far too confident a grin for either pilot's taste. "The Luna Project machines are far better. And with your skill—"

"We'll see," Merau interrupted. "There's only one way to find out just how good a machine is."

Erin shifted uncomfortably. "Well, once we get into combat with them, I know you'll be impressed." She smiled at Grey. "I'll see you later."

She disappeared around a corner and headed for the hangar, leaving Grey and Merau to stand at the crew lounge's doorway awkwardly. Finally, Merau crossed her arms and chuckled.

"You know how you said you joined the Phantom Pain to get chicks?"

Grey buried his face in his hands. "Yeah, but I kinda thought they weren't going to be in the Phantom Pain too." He shook his head. "You know she totally thinks you're my girlfriend or something."

"You should be so lucky," Merau laughed, and slapped him on the shoulder. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. I was hoping this sort of thing wouldn't happen." He shook his head again. "Like we don't have enough drama going around here."

—

Silence filled the air inside Sven Cal Bayan's bunk as he locked gazes with Lieutenant Junior Grade Kelly Maynard, the young commander of the _Charlemagne_'s new combat team. They had brought the Luna Project's machines with them as the foundation of this new unit. And Lieutenant Maynard had a sterling performance history as a mobile suit squad leader on the vicious battlefront of the Arabian peninsula, where she had acquitted herself well in ferocious mobile suit combat in the blistering desert. Surely she deserved to be here.

But many people deserved to be on the _Charlemagne_, and they were, and they had been blown away soon enough. It was not enough to deserve to be here.

Sven Cal Bayan abruptly stood up. "We will see how effective you are in combat," he said. "Your target will be the Twilight. We will assess your performance against the Resistance's 'Angel of Death.' Is that understood?"

Kelly saluted sharply. "Yes sir."

Sven sent her on her way and put a hand to his chin in thought. Shams would of course probably complain that he was using human lives as his measuring stick for an enemy pilot's skill again...but, really, what choice did he have?

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

Emily never understood why these stupid space suits had to be so tight. There were all kinds of space suit models, civilian and military, that had more room for the wearer—but no, not for pilots. Instead she had a green and black ZAFT flight suit that hugged her every curve in ways she didn't appreciate, and made it a pain to cram her body into it and then peel it off when she was done. It was like somebody had designed this thing that way intentionally.

With a shove, she finally squirmed into the boots, yanked on her gloves, seized her helmet, and staggered out of the locker room. And of course this stupid flight suit made her blush the whole way from the lockers to the Twilight's cockpit. Someone had definitely done this intentionally.

All she knew about this coming mission was that it would pit her against the ZAFT unit that they had fought the other day. What had his name been—Vader or something?

Emily drifted down the corridor towards the hangar, this time remembering to grab one of the pull-bars before she hit a bulkhead or something. Bad enough that she had to wear this embarrassing flight suit.

She rounded a corner and headed into the hangar, aiming straight for the Twilight. Back to war.

—

"The _Star One_ is going to focus on evacuating the staff from Troya Station," Athrun explained, as he, Shinn, and Rau drifted around the mapping console on the _Minerva_'s bridge, all in their flight suits. He pointed toward the green shape in the screen's center. "The _Minerva_ will keep the _Seraphim_ occupied."

Rau crossed his arms pensively as he studied the map. "That will be difficult," he said. "Look at the radar spread. The station has taken damage. And a research station like Troya is not built to withstand warship fire." He shrugged. "We will not have long before the station splits apart, and trying to fish survivors out of colony wreckage is a task that would consume time we do not have."

Shinn and Athrun both shot Rau a distasteful look, and Shinn put a hand to his chin. "What would ZAFT even want with a place like that...?"

"Research and technology, most likely," Rau answered.

Athrun sighed. "Yeah, DSSD's been working on a new propulsion system, among other things. The Alliance has expressed all kinds of interest in it, but so far it's been low priority. But I don't know why ZAFT would care." He glanced dubiously at Rau.

"I don't know of anything either," the masked man answered. "Either way, it would behoove us to get to Troya and secure their treasures ourselves."

—

The part right before a battle was always the worst for Stella Loussier, as she strapped herself into her trusty Gaia Gundam. The battle itself wasn't scary—because Shinn was out there, and so were her friends, and she had the Gaia and she could fight. The scary part was before it all began, because she was just sitting here, waiting to launch.

She sat back as the catapult doors opened and the Legend stomped into the starboard catapult. Rau was sort of weird, and Stella really didn't know what was up with the mask, but she didn't see why Shinn was so mad at him. Maybe he was mean and Stella just didn't see it. But he was nice enough to her.

The catapult fired and the _Minerva_ shuddered. Stella eased the Gaia into the mechanism next. This part was always fun, being pressed back into her seat by the g-forces. And the fighting after that...well, it definitely wasn't scary.

"Okay Stella, you've got the all-clear," Roxy said with a smirk. "Go kick some ass."

Stella nodded enthusiastically. "Stella and Gaia, going out!"

—

**DSSD Troya Research Station, Lagrange Point 4**

"Commander, there's some rising heat signatures coming from that satellite, Apollon A," one of the ZAKU pilots. Inside the DOM Trooper, Varder glanced over at the machine and switched to his infrared sensors—and blinked in surprise at the white-hot shapes pulsating around the satellite's center.

"The hell's that thing?"

"Intel suggests it's part of the Stargazer," the ZAKU pilot explained. "It fires a laser to simulate solar wind, which the Stargazer catches and uses for acceleration. But that laser is also usable as a weapon. Could possibly take out a battleship."

"I see," Varder said with a chuckle. "And they're pointing it at the _Seraphim_. How clever." He threw a switch. "Two Gunner ZAKUs to target satellite Apollon A, on the double!"

Within moments, a pair of crimson Gunner ZAKU Warriors came streaking towards the glowing Apollon A and leveled off their Orthros cannons towards the structure. Varder glanced up at a quartet of Civilian Astrays charging towards them.

"Not so fast!" he cried, and leveled off his Gigalauncher. A beam blast took down one of them, and the remaining three split their formation—just as the ZAKUs opened fire and ripped apart Apollon A with a barrage of red beams.

"And as for the rest—!" Lilith shouted, and a moment later her GOUF came barreling out of nowhere to rip two of the Astrays in half with its sword. The lone survivor slid around her and raised its beam gun for the kill—only for Varder to pick it off with a beam shot of his own.

"Hayes, report in," Varder said, and sat back in the DOM's cockpit.

"My troops have access to the station interior," a gruff male voice answered. "Station personnel are armed better than expected, but we've only had two wounded so far. We're nearing our objective."

"Good." Varder blinked in surprise and cut the signal as he caught sight of something emerging from the battered station—something gleaming white, with golden highlights and a huge metal ring on its back.

"Is that seriously..." Lilith trailed off in disbelief.

Across the battlefield, inside the Stargazer, Selene glanced down inside the cockpit towards Sol. "Are you scared?"

Sol smiled back apologetically. "I guess."

Selene turned her eyes towards the crimson mobile suits ahead. "It's alright," she said. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this. Making you kill people..."

"I'll do it," Sol interrupted. "To protect the Stargazer. Even if those guys are Coordinators, I can't let the Stargazer get turned into a weapon."

The Stargazer's eyes lit up and the gleaming mobile suit charged into battle.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

Evers held back a scowl as the reports came in. He should have known this would happen.

He seized the intercom. "Commander Ehrmacht," he growled, "sensor reporting in. The _Minerva_'s mobile suits are on their way. The ship itself will be here soon. They brought that _Nazca_ with them too. We're not going to hold out for long against them both."

Varder cursed under his breath. "Figures. They have the Stargazer armed and fighting back, and it's actually not doing too bad. We might need to disable it."

"That would defeat the purpose of our coming here."

"Not if Hayes can capture the computer core. He says he's close."

Evers scowled. Of course, they would have to get back out as well, and he couldn't rightly call this mission a success if all they got away with was a set of blueprints and research documents. They had been sent to capture the Stargazer and provide ZAFT at long last with a working Voiture Lumiere system. The ZAKU Goliath needed nothing less as propulsion, and the Coordinators needed nothing less than the ZAKU Goliath.

He clenched his fists. "_Seraphim_, turn and engage the _Minerva!_"

—

Settled into the Legend Gundam's cockpit, Rau Le Creuset broke into a grin as the Legend went spiraling towards the jet black _Seraphim_. That had been a fine ship, the sister vessel to his own _Deliverance_, but now it was his enemy. Funny how these things worked.

The _Seraphim_ let loose a vicious salvo of missiles, cut down a moment later by the Legend's CIWS guns. Rau blinked in surprise as two mobile suits came streaking at him—a Blaze ZAKU Warrior and a Slash ZAKU Warrior, all in red, beam rifle at the ready.

"Only two?" he chuckled. "Let's see if your luck lasts through today!"

The Legend backflipped as the two ZAKUs opened fire, and then darted beneath the Slash ZAKU's barrage of beam Gatling shots. Rau held back a laugh and activated his DRAGOONs.

—

Beams sizzled by the Destiny and Gaia Gundams as they made their approach to the battered Troya Station. Shinn scanned the black sky for a sign of his enemies, and abruptly they appeared—a Slash ZAKU Warrior and a Blaze ZAKU Phantom, beam rifles ready.

"Stella, split up," Shinn instructed, and a moment later the Slash ZAKU filled the sky with beam Gatling shots. The Destiny rocketed up over the two ZAKUs to draw their fire, and the Gaia lunged at them both with its beam saber shining to life.

Instead, the Slash ZAKU charged down towards her and swung back with its beam axe, stopping the Gaia's blade cold. Stella scowled in frustration.

"It'll take more than that...!"

Up above, the Destiny whirled around the ZAKU Phantom's furious beam rifle shots and pounded a salvo of his own against the ZAKU's shoulder shields. The ZAKU darted aside as Shinn rushed in for a finishing palm cannon blow—but instead, Shinn whirled around with a beam boomerang in hand and hurled it through the ZAKU's beam rifle.

Monoeye flashing, the ZAKU drew both its beam tomahawks and lunged to slam them both against the Destiny's beam shield. As the boomerang came whirling back in, the ZAKU jinked to the right, and Shinn caught it with a grunt of frustration.

"Well, if it's going to be like that...!" cried Shinn, and with a crash he stashed his beam rifle and drew the massive anti-ship sword instead. The ZAKU raised both its tomahawks and waited as the Destiny charged.

—

"Split up!" cried Athrun, and with a crash the Infinite Justice fired its thrusters and darted apart, along with the Savior, as a blazing red beam tore through the space between them. Athrun scanned the space ahead of them and found a crimson Gunner ZAKU Warrior on the warpath, a Blaze ZAKU Warrior just behind it, beam rifle leveled off.

"Well well, so they're back for more," Viveka growled. "I'll take care of the guy with the cannon."

The Savior rocketed forward and lunged to the right just as the Gunner ZAKU let loose another blast. The Justice roared after it and pounded the Blaze ZAKU with beam fire; it fired back a salvo of missiles, but Athrun effortlessly tore them down with a CIWS burst and charged in close. The ZAKU drew a beam tomahawk and brought it down with a crash onto the Justice's beam shield.

Nearby, the Savior whirled around the Gunner ZAKU's blazing beam shots and lined up for a plasma cannon volley. The ZAKU jetted upward as Viveka opened fire; she ground her teeth in frustration as the red ZAKU forced her back on the defensive. She dove to the left as the ZAKU fired again and closed in with a shout—

An instant later, she slammed back the controls and yanked the Savior back as the ZAKU whipped around and hurled a grenade towards her. As the red cylinder showered her with flames and shrapnel, she threw the Savior to the side again—just as a blast from the ZAKU's cannon pounded its way through the smoke.

"Very clever," Viveka snarled, "but you'll have to do better than that!"

—

The Chaos and Abyss Gundams rocketed down through a drifting field of wreckage on approach to the Troya Station. The debris of nothing but DSSD Civilian Astrays and parts of the station littered the surrounding space. Sting furrowed his brow as the two mobile suits approached the colony and began to reach bloody, bullet-riddled corpses. Perhaps ZAFT had sent infantry as well as mobile suits—which, he supposed, would make sense if their purpose here was to capture Troya's research materials as well as its prototype mobile suit.

The sensors wailed. "Auel, one o'clock!" he shouted, and the two Gundams jetted apart—just as a pulsing red beam ripped through the space between them. A Gunner ZAKU Warrior burst out of the wreckage, cannon leveled off for another blast, and a Slash ZAKU Warrior came after it, and then a Blaze ZAKU Phantom, and a Blaze ZAKU Warrior.

Sting clenched his fists around the Chaos's controls. "Okay, there's only four of them," he snarled. "Auel—"

"Motherfuckers!" Auel screamed, and the Abyss let loose a devastating barrage of beams. The four ZAKUs split up, with the Slash and Blaze ZAKU Warriors ducking back into the colony while the Gunner ZAKU and ZAKU Phantom remained outside. The Gunner ZAKU fired again to force the two Gundams back on the defensive; Sting ground his teeth and the Chaos's gunbarrels lifted off with a flash of exhaust.

"We'll have to take care of these two before we go after the ones inside," he grunted. "Auel! Cover me!"

—

"Aoma, we should at least send a couple of our mobile suits to help you," Ali protested from the Impulse's auxiliary screen. "We have seven left around the ship. We could spare two."

Aoma scowled as she dodged fire from a very determined Slash ZAKU Phantom and its Blaze ZAKU Warrior partner. "I told you, keep them all around the _Star One_," she answered, "and start docking with Troya as soon as possible. Nostravich said that there were ZAFT infantry entering the station. Whatever they're there for, they're probably not going to leave witnesses."

She threw the Impulse to the side as the Slash ZAKU came charging at her with a furious axe swipe. The Impulse leveled off its rifle for a killing blow—but an instant later she went rocketing upwards as the Blaze ZAKU opened fire with its beam rifle.

"There's only two of you this time," she snarled. "And I'm not letting you get away with this one." The two ZAKUs' monoeyes burned bright against the blackness of space. "Ali! Don't waste time! They're getting killed in there!"

—

Licking his lips as the beams flashed around his rumbling DOM Trooper, Varder Ehrmacht watched eagerly as the Stargazer leveled off its beam gun and fired. This thing was definitely something else—judging by the way it had caught seven or eight of his and Lilith's beam blasts and now had them spinning around it in an elegant display of the Voiture Lumiere's capabilities.

"It would be a shame to scuff up all that pretty armor," snarled Lilith as the beams blazed around her GOUF, "but I'm starting to get sick of this!"

The GOUF rocketed forward and sprayed the Stargazer with beam bolts—but a moment later, the white mobile suit flung its left hand forward and sent a column of green blazing energy straight at the red mobile suit. Varder cursed and shouldered the GOUF to the side, just in time to activate his beam shield and take the brunt of the attack.

"Lil, stop using the beam guns!" he shouted. "We have to get that thing to exhaust what it's already captured."

The Stargazer darted to the side and attacked with another wave of beams; Varder roared over the blasts and leveled off his Gigalauncher to fire a bazooka shell. The projectile slammed into the Stargazer's beam shield with a thundering burst of smoke and the white mobile suit staggered back.

"_Gotcha!_" screamed Lilith, and her GOUF burst through the smoke with sword upraised—

The alarms let out a terrified shriek and Lilith jammed the controls back, as a shimmering red beam ripped through the space between herself and her prey. She turned her eyes in disbelief towards their source. "Is that—?"

Varder grinned. "The Twilight!"

Across the way, the Twilight Gundam folded up its long-range cannon, drew a beam saber, and charged with a blast of exhaust.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

A wave of pulsing beams ripped by the _Minerva_'s bridge tower, and Meyrin gripped her chair's armrests as the ship quaked. She snapped her eyes back up towards the screen, finding the _Seraphim_ ponderously swinging in her direction—

"Isolde, _fire!_"

The _Minerva_ shuddered as the Isolde let loose a salvo of shells that slammed hard into the _Seraphim_'s prow. Meyrin ground her teeth.

"Malik, dive!"

With a protesting scream from the _Minerva_, the winged battleship plunged down beneath the _Seraphim_ just as the black warship plowed through the smoke and fired back with the two Tristan cannons on its bow. Meyrin fixed her eyes on the pitch-black shape passing by overhead.

"Tristans, target the _Seraphim_ and—"

She never finished, as instead the _Seraphim_ let loose a storm of missiles that came shrieking down onto the _Minerva_ from above. The CIWS guns flared to life and cut the projectiles from the sky, but a cloud of smoke rippled up around the _Minerva_.

"A smokescreen...?" Abbey started. "What are they—"

"Malik, flank speed! Ascend!" Meyrin cried, and the _Minerva_ rumbled obligingly as the engines rocketed it out of the smoke cloud—just before the _Seraphim_'s Tristans flashed through the haze. "Bring us around! Isolde, Tristans, target the _Seraphim_'s engine blocks! Make sure they hit!"

As the _Minerva_ wheeled around for another pass, Meyrin cast an anxious glance at the Troya Station. The _Star One_ had docked at the other end of the station and the evacuees were streaming in—but they were running out of time.

—

Athrun Zala ground his teeth as the missiles pounded against his Infinite Justice Gundam. Up ahead, the triumphant Blaze ZAKU Warrior lined up its beam rifle for a killing blast—

"Not like that!" Athrun snarled, and with a roar of engines the Justice hurled itself out of the smoke and stormed forward. The ZAKU reared back and fired its rifle, but the Justice plowed through the blast with its beam shield active and slashed the rifle in two with the blade on its carry shield. The ZAKU lurched back, drew a tomahawk, and swung furiously towards the Justice's exposed shoulder—

Instead, Athrun sent a sweeping kick upwards with the Justice's right leg, the beam blade shining to life, and tore off the ZAKU's arm at the elbow. With a crash, he brought the leg back down across the ZAKU's face and knocked it to the side—and before it could recover, he speared it through the cockpit with a beam rifle blast and let it die in a thundering inferno.

He glanced up. "Viveka, where are you?"

His answer came from a piece of debris exploding, and from the flames burst the Savior Gundam, with the Gunner ZAKU right behind it. The ZAKU leveled off its beam cannon to open fire; instead, the Justice showered it with beam rifle blasts and forced it back on the defensive.

"Cornered!" Viveka screamed, and pounded the ZAKU's shield with plasma cannon blasts. The ZAKU's shield snapped in two and the arm disappeared in a blaze of red plasma—and a moment later, Viveka stormed forward to put a beam saber through the ZAKU's cockpit.

"Well," Athrun started as the impaled ZAKU exploded, "now that that's done, let's go. ZAFT sent in infantry, and they're on their way back out with Troya's computer core."

Viveka blinked. "Bad?"

"Bad. Come on."

—

"Forget resisting, Ali!" Aoma snapped as her Impulse Gundam shuddered under the Slash ZAKU Phantom's beam Gatling barrage. "Tell them to just get to the _Star One!_ Fighting a bunch of ZAFT marines isn't going to do anything but get them all killed!"

She snapped her eyes back up and vaulted above the Slash ZAKU's horizontal axe swing—right into the jaws of the Blaze ZAKU Warrior as it descended upon her with a beam rifle barrage. The ZAKU came screaming in with its tomahawk raised; Aoma whirled to the right, leveled off her beam rifle, and shot the passing ZAKU through the chest as it tore by.

The ZAKU threw sparks and exploded, and its flaming smoke burst apart as the Slash ZAKU came charging at her. She backed away and took its furious axe swing to her shield, but the reverberation rattled through the Impulse's body and she bit back a curse.

—

Troya Station's wall burst open with a pillar of fire, and from the flames emerged the two ZAKUs that had slipped into the colony. Sting and Auel turned their fire on the opening—only for the Gunner ZAKU Warrior and Blaze ZAKU Phantom to lunge into the way and deflect the fire with their shields. The Slash ZAKU Warrior and Blaze ZAKU Warrior emerged with a large white block in the latter's hands. The Slash ZAKU darted up in front of the Blaze ZAKU and let loose a beam Gatling barrage that pounded the two Gundams and forced them back.

"I'm guessing that thing's important!" Auel grunted.

"He's trying to get away—" Sting started. "Like hell you will!"

The gunbarrels lifted off and showered the four ZAKUs with missiles, but the three ZAKUs stood up to defend their cargo-laden comrade. The Gunner ZAKU leveled off its cannon to fire back, but one of the missiles snaked its way past the red mobile suit's defenses and plowed into the cockpit—and as the stricken machine staggered back and exploded, the other two mobile suits closed ranks around their burdened companion and poured fire after the two Gundams.

"Not so fast, motherfuckers!" roared Auel, and the Abyss fired off a punishing beam cannon barrage. The blasts slammed against the two ZAKUs' shields and drove them both back—but an instant later they both somersaulted up and charged straight at the two Gundams. "What the fuck?"

"Auel, go after that third one!" Sting cried. "I'll—"

He was cut off as the two ZAKUs opened fire and the Blaze ZAKU Phantom let loose a wave of missiles. Sting bit back a curse and opened fire with his CIWS guns, but the ZAKUs kept coming and he braced himself for battle again.

—

Beam sabers clashed and Varder Ehrmacht's ecstatic cackling filled the cockpit as the DOM Trooper and Twilight Gundam locked beam sabers, sparks flying amid the ruins of Troya Station. Emily ground her teeth as the DOM surged forward, and with a crash it slammed its foot down into the Twilight's stomach and sent her Gundam reeling back.

"At your limit already?" Varder cackled, and the DOM swept in again with saber raised. "I guess it's true what they say!" The Twilight jetted backwards to avoid the DOM's killing saber swipe. "There's only so much a superior machine can do against a superior pilot!"

Emily glanced over her shoulder anxiously at the white mobile suit surrounded by swirling green energy. The Stargazer was assiduously avoiding every move the GOUF made after it—but if she was going to help, she'd have to beat this DOM first.

"I don't have time for you," she growled, "so in that case—!"

The DOM charged forward with a finishing saber stab—but instead, the Twilight darted to the right and pounded a kick into the DOM's exposed side. Varder yelped in surprise and brought his Gigalauncher to bear, only for the Twilight to tear it from his grip with its left hand. He brought down his saber, only to catch the Twilight's blade instead, and with a crash the black Gundam sent him reeling from a knee to the chest.

"Goddammit!" he shouted. "What the hell—!"

Instead, the Twilight backflipped away and rocketed towards the GOUF.

Inside the Stargazer, Selene shot a look over her shoulder as she saw the Twilight storming towards her, and let out a cry of alarm. Sol jerked the Stargazer to the right—just as the Twilight rocketed through and slammed the GOUF back with an overhead saber hack to its shield.

"Varder!" Lilith screamed. "Distract her!"

In the Stargazer's cockpit, Selene's eyes went wide. "Sol, get that one! Now!"

Sol leveled off the Stargazer's beam gun and opened fire, and with a crash he blew the GOUF's beam rifle out of its hand—but when he ticked the gun to the right and pulled the trigger again, nothing happened, and instead the lights in the Stargazer's cockpit began to go dark and the swirling energy dissipated.

Selene felt her blood run cold. "The energy...we didn't have time to install the nuclear reactor, so we were running on batteries..."

Inside the GOUF, Lilith flashed a victorious smile and deflected the Twilight's saber stroke with her shield. An instant later, the DOM rocketed back into the fight and forced the Twilight on the defensive with a vicious saber slice of its own. The GOUF whirled down towards the Stargazer and shot forward its right arm—

Sol tensed himself in the Stargazer's cockpit seat. "I'm sorry, Selene," he whispered—

A moment later, Selene let out a cry as her cockpit seat burst out of the Stargazer's cockpit, just as the GOUF wrapped its heat rod around the silent Stargazer's chest. Selene snapped a hand up to her radio, eyes wide with disbelief as the GOUF rocketed away, towing her darkened masterpiece behind it.

"Sol! What are you doing?" she screamed. "What—why did you—"

"You're the only one who could rebuild the Stargazer from scratch," Sol's voice replied, broken by static as the GOUF roared away with its prize. "I know we were going to finish it together, but at least the Stargazer will survive this way. Just get out of here, and survive, and—"

The line went dead, and the DOM burst up into Selene's view with its monoeye burning bright as it stared down at her. The DOM reared back with its saber and Selene clamped her eyes shut—

Instead, a mobile suit hand seized her drifting cockpit chair, yanked her back, and slammed a beam saber up into the DOM's path to deflect its blow, and inside the Twilight Gundam, Emily ground her teeth in fury at the crimson enemy machine.

Varder licked his lips in the DOM Trooper's cockpit. "You're just getting better and better, angel girl," he chuckled, and the DOM surged forward with a shout.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

"Capture of the Stargazer unit is confirmed," Lilith's voice filled the _Seraphim_'s bridge. "Looks like it was running off a battery or something, because it just stopped and shut down in the middle of combat."

"Fine," Evers snarled. "Great. Inform Commander Ehrmacht and recall our mobile suits. Helm, break off from the _Minerva_. Hit them with one more missile salvo and turn our prow towards Troya."

The _Seraphim_ rattled as the _Minerva_'s Tristans came too close for comfort to his ship, but instead the _Seraphim_ poured missiles at them and forced them to veer to starboard. And through the bridge windows, the smoldering but still whole hulk of Troya came into view.

"Sensors, what's that other ship up to?"

"Enemy _Nazca_-class has disengaged and is heading in the direction of L1 at top speed," the sensor officer reported. "Heat signatures indicate that there are still hundreds of people inside." Evers sat back and studied the battered station before him for a moment. One more salvo would be sufficient.

"No witnesses. Tristans and main gun, target and destroy Troya Station!"

The _Seraphim_ obligingly shuddered as the _Seraphim_'s main guns let loose a devastating beam salvo that plowed straight into the station's center, and with a blinding flash of light and a thundering shockwave, Troya Station vanished in the center of an earsplitting fireball.

Evers held back a smirk. Such was the fate of traitors.

—

Emily winced at the scream filling her cockpit from the passenger sitting in her Gundam's left hand. Troya Station had just been destroyed—and next was Varder's victorious cackling.

"Looks like I win this one, angel girl!" he laughed, and with a crash the DOM brought its knee up into the Twilight's chest. He brought down his saber towards the Twilight's exposed torso—only for Emily to yank back the controls and hurl her Gundam clear of the DOM's finishing blow. Varder charged forward, saber pulled back—

Instead, the Twilight shot forward and sliced off the DOM's right arm at the shoulder. Varder hissed a curse and rushed off into the darkness, leaving Emily behind with a combat flare in his wake.

She turned her eyes towards the Twilight's left hand, where sat a weeping woman strapped into an unbolted cockpit seat. Pure, raw anguish was emanating from her and shaking Emily's nerves. Obviously she had just lost friends, in that white mobile suit and on that station...and Emily knew how _that_ felt.

"Excuse me, ma'am," she started, and the woman looked up at her sharply. "I'm sorry about all this, but I need to get you back to the _Minerva_ now." The Twilight turned its blue eyes towards the Resistance's winged warship. "I think you've been separated from the rest of the station's evacuees, but we can look after you until things get settled." She paused for a moment, wondered if it would matter if she smiled, and turned the Gundam's eyes towards her passenger, hoping they would look reassuring in her stead. "What's your name?"

The woman stared apprehensively at the Gundam's cold blue eyes for a moment. "I'm Selene," she said, her voice shaking. "And you are...?"

Emily smiled. "I'm Emily. The Angel of Death." The Twilight turned back towards the _Minerva_. "Let's get out of here, before the Alliance or anyone else shows up."

The Twilight took off with a burst of exhaust, and Emily forced down the memories of herself as that broken person grieving for lost friends. This time it was different; this time she had to be strong.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

Meyrin Hawke rubbed her temples and sat back in the _Minerva_'s captain's chair. They had a new passenger now; passengers always gave her headaches. This time it was a beautiful Coordinator from the Troya Station's research staff. Her name was Selene McGriff, she had been a principal researcher on the Stargazer—as that strange white mobile suit had been called—and she had tried to use it in combat against the attacking ZAFT forces. Instead, she had been ejected by her copilot and recovered by Emily—and now she was in one of the spare bunks, still in shock over what had just happened here.

And, judging by the reactions of her Newtype pilots, a whole lot of people had died here regardless of the _Star One_'s efforts.

She glanced up at the sound of an alarm from Burt's console. "That's weird," Burt started. "Captain, there's a heat signature approaching consistent with a mobile suit. But there's just one, and I've never seen anything like it before."

Meyrin turned towards the auxiliary screen. "Put it up on the monitor."

The screen flickered to life and she felt her blood run cold. She had seen that style, those colors before—black, blue, red, white, with resplendent blue wings and gleaming white armor, two beam rifles in its hands, and golden eyes shining in the darkness.

The bridge door opened and Athrun burst onto the deck with a cry. "Captain, we've got to get moving!" he cried, and Meyrin turned towards him in shock. "That thing...that Gundam! It's..."

Meyrin looked back in disbelief.

"_It's Kira!_"

Across the battlefield, Kira Yamato opened his eye and scowled, and with a flash of gold from its eyes, the Vega Freedom Gundam charged.

—

To be continued...


	5. Phase 05: Kira Yamato

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 05 - Kira Yamato

—

**April 13th, CE 77 - Lagrange Point 4**

Two sets of wings. Eight DRAGOONs. Plasma cannons. Magnetic coating. Beam wings. Its eyes burned bright and gold, its opulent blue wings spread and let loose a pair of wings of cold blue light, and with a roar of its mighty engines the Vega Freedom Gundam charged into battle.

"I've been expecting this battle for a long time, _Minerva_," intoned Kira Yamato as he watched the winged warship launch its complement of mobile suits. "Now let this be the only time we meet!"

With that, the Freedom launched its DRAGOONs and went on the attack.

The battle began with the Abyss firing off a punishing barrage of beam cannon blasts straight towards the Freedom, but Kira effortlessly whirled around the shots with a storm of afterimages in his wake. The eight Gundams split up, the Twilight and Destiny activated their own beam wings, and the _Minerva_'s mobile suits let loose another volley of firepower—

"I should have known you'd show up!" Athrun roared, and the Infinite Justice charged with a furious saber swipe. Kira jetted backward and ducked beneath the Justice's next swing. "Attacking civilians and shooting down innocent people!"

The Freedom flashed up behind the Justice, and as Athrun whirled around Kira pummeled the Gundam with a ferocious storm of DRAGOON fire. Kira glanced over his shoulder, at the crimson Savior lining up to fire, and turned one of his DRAGOONs on Viveka instead.

"Fancy seeing you here, Kira!" cackled Rau Le Creuset, and with a crash the Legend Gundam activated its DRAGOONs and showered the Freedom with beam fire. Kira wove his way through the blasts and returned fire with a full burst from his Gundam's plasma cannons, Callidus guns, beam rifles, and railguns—slamming every shot into the Legend's beam shield and hurling it back. "And I'm pleased to see you've grown stronger under Valentine's hand!"

Shinn broke through the fire with a scream and swung his anti-ship sword at the Freedom's waist, only to come up with nothing as the white Gundam jetted back and left only an afterimage behind it. Kira fired back with his railguns to punch the Destiny back—just in time for the Chaos to drop in, open fire with its beam rifle, and come up empty as the Freedom dodged again. The Gaia came whirling in next from behind, its own beam rifle leveled off—but the Freedom somersaulted over it and systematically pounded the eight Gundams with fire from his DRAGOONs.

"It will take more than that to defeat my Vega Freedom!" Kira snapped. The Twilight lunged up behind him, beam saber ablaze—but its killing slash passed through only another afterimage, and the Freedom rocketed up to safety. Kira furrowed his brow as the Abyss lined up for another barrage behind him—

Before the blue Gundam could attack, Kira ripped it to pieces with his DRAGOONs, blowing off both its arms, both its guns, both its shoulder shells, both its legs, and its head. As Auel screamed in surprise, he jerked back the controls and readied his Callidus cannon—

A moment later, the Freedom lunged up into the Abyss's path and slashed out its Callidus cannon with a blinding horizontal swipe. The built-up energy in the cannon exploded, the cockpit filled with shrapnel, and the line from the Abyss went silent.

"_AUEL!_" Sting screamed, and with a roar of its engines, the Chaos Gundam charged towards the Freedom. "You son of a bitch! _You son of a bitch!_"

The Freedom somersaulted effortlessly over the Chaos as the remaining Gundams opened fire, and this time Shinn closed in with a scream. The Freedom whirled around and pounded the Destiny's beam shields with DRAGOON fire, and then darted aside as Shinn forced his way through anyway with a furious sword swing. The Legend moved in next, a javelin drawn in its left hand, and it came down with a downward diagonal slash—but Kira darted to the side and filled the black sky with afterimages as he took off and let loose another storm from his own DRAGOONs.

"And _you!_" Kira snarled, and turned his guns on the Legend. "You abandoned me! Like they all abandoned me!" He focused his DRAGOON fire on the Legend. "I guess you really weren't committed to changing the world, you lying bastard!"

Rau Le Creuset answered with a laugh and swarmed his DRAGOONs around the Freedom—only to see the Freedom's own DRAGOONs methodically pick his out of the sky with pulsing beam shots. "I'm afraid I've just found a better person to do that than you!" he laughed. "After all," the Freedom closed in, "you are a person who shouldn't exist!"

The Legend darted to the side as the Freedom pounded it with DRAGOON fire. An instant later, the Savior rushed in from behind.

"_Gotcha!_" Viveka screamed, and leveled off her cannons—

An instant later, the Freedom somersaulted up and let loose a devastating barrage of plasma cannon and beam rifle fire to blow the Savior's cannons apart. Viveka screamed in shock as the Savior shuddered under the blow, just before the DRAGOONs swept in and blasted off the Savior's limbs and head. Kira leveled off his rifle to finish off the red mobile suit—

"_No you won't!_"

Out of nowhere, the Infinite Justice shouldered the ruined Savior to the side and deflected Kira's shots with its beam shield. A moment later, Kira darted backwards and rocketed up as the Twilight stormed forward with its saber. The Legend opened fire with its DRAGOONs—Kira tore them out of the sky, dodged a salvo of beam rifle shots from the Chaos and Gaia, and then ducked again underneath another sword stroke from the Destiny.

"Is this guy unstoppable?" Emily groaned.

The Destiny roared up after the gleaming white mobile suit, and Shinn's eyes went dull as the seed fell. "Just 'cuz your machine's better doesn't mean I'm not going to kill you!"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"The Abyss and Savior got totaled!" Roxy cried. "Auel's not responding! They're getting torn apart!"

Meyrin sat in the _Minerva_'s captain's seat, staring in disbelief as her warship's Gundam complement was systematically torn to pieces by a lone mobile suit. Was this the power ZAFT had built at Mars? She began to regret sending the _Star One_ ahead to Terminal—but they were too far away to call back now...

"Heat signature approaching!" Burt cried. "Captain—!"

Too late—Meyrin nearly fell from her seat as a shimmering red beam slammed into the _Minerva_'s prow and wiped out the Tannhäuser and Isolde. She looked to the ship's starboard side in disbelief—at the blue-trimmed shape of another _Minerva_-class ship rising from the darkness.

"Where _that_ come from?" Roxy exclaimed.

Abbey's eyes went wide in recognition. "Mirage Colloid!"

"Three mobile suits approaching! Model unknown!" Burt added.

"Captain, we've lost the Tannhäuser, the Isolde, ten missile tubes, and two CIWS emplacements on the starboard side!" Chen put in.

"And our maneuverability has probably been reduced," Malik finished. "We have to retreat!"

Meyrin forced herself to remain calm. She had not come this way as the _Minerva_'s captain just to see another ship in the line blow her out of the sky. "Malik, best possible speed, evasive maneuvers! Chen, arm whatever weapons we've got left and prepare for combat! Roxy, get somebody to go handle those incoming mobile suits!"

She turned her eyes towards the blue-trimmed clone of her own ship and ground her teeth.

_You may have new toys and new tricks, but we've learned a thing or two here..._

—

The Legend Gundam shuddered as the Vega Freedom took off its left arm at the elbow with a sweeping beam saber blow. Rau ground his teeth and moved in his last two DRAGOONs—only for the Freedom's own DRAGOONs to tear them apart with a storm of beam fire. He leveled off his rifle—just in time for the Freedom to dart up over his head, and before he could react the Freedom's DRAGOONs ripped away the extremities from the Legend's body and hurled the broken mobile suit away.

"I'll end this right now!" screamed Kira, and the Freedom came roaring down, beam saber raised—

Instead, the Twilight was there to jam its blade into the Freedom's path and deflect the blow, and Emily surged back with a scream to throw the Freedom back. Kira lunged up over the Twilight's head and forced it back on the defensive with a wave of beam fire. A moment later, the Destiny was there, anti-ship sword flashing down—the Freedom swept to the side and took aim at Shinn's exposed back.

"Like hell you will!" roared Athrun, and with a crash the Infinite Justice slammed into the Freedom and threw it to the side. Kira jetted back and kicked upward to knock the Justice off course, and his DRAGOONs swept in for the kill—but the Destiny charged back up into his face with a scream from its pilot.

"I haven't forgotten!" cried Shinn, and he slammed his sword down onto the Freedom's beam saber. "I'll never forget! _I'll kill you!_"

The Freedom's DRAGOONs swarmed in around the Destiny and forced it back.

"And I haven't forgotten about _you,_" snarled Kira, "but first—!

With that, the Freedom whipped around and deflected a saber strike from the Justice, and with a crash he pounded the Justice's beam shield with his DRAGOONs. The Justice darted aside, just as the Twilight stormed up through the fire with a saber swipe of its own. Kira jetted to the side and let the DRAGOONs push the Twilight back on the defensive, and with a shout he descended back down towards the Justice. "First I'll take care of _you!_"

—

"That son of a bitch got Auel," snarled Sting, hands trembling around the Chaos's controls as his Gundam sailed into battle alongside the Gaia. Up ahead were three silver mobile suits, vaguely reminiscent of ZAFT's GuAIZ and CGUE, with long wings stretching off their backs. Sting stared up at them all with fury bubbling in his veins. "We'll take care of them and then—"

He went silent and the Chaos and Gaia darted apart as the three silver mobile suits opened fire. One of them charged forward with a blast of exhaust and pummeled the two Gundams with beam fire, as the other two fired shining red beams from cannons embedded in their torsos.

"Stella! Flank this one!" Sting shouted, and lifted off the Chaos's gunbarrels with a burst of exhaust—

An instant later, both of them vanished in thundering explosions, and the other two enemies roared into the battle with drawn beam sabers. The Chaos threw itself backward to dodge a beam saber swipe—but the second gray machine ducked in from behind, and the Chaos shuddered as the second machine sliced off its left arm and leg with a crash.

"Dammit!" Sting shouted. "Where—"

The first machine leveled off its rifle for a killing blow, but the Gaia lunged into the way to deflect the shot with its shield.

"Sting! Get back!" Stella cried—but too late, as the third machine rushed into the fray and joined the second in pummeling the Chaos with beam fire. "_Sting!_"

"How did they—?" started Sting, and he threw the sparking remains of his mobile suit forward to dodge a finishing saber stab from the second machine. Stella caught the broken Chaos and hurled it aside, then rocketed upward to dodge a finishing stab from one of the silver mobile suits.

"They're fast," growled Stella, as the seed fell before her eyes, "but I'm not going to lose like this!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

Lyle watched with satisfaction as the _Minerva_'s starboard Tristan cannon exploded under a well-placed shot from his own ship's Tristans. The red winged battleship shuddered under the blow and banked away, and it let loose a handful of missiles to cover its maneuver—but the _Fortuna_'s CIWS emplacements expertly cut them down.

Once again the Vice Marshal had come through, with the master stroke of ZAFT's disposable Mirage Colloid units. They dispensed the Miracle Colloid prisms, they contained the equipment for generating the magnetic field, and they ejected from the ship when their prism fields dissipated. One of those machines had hidden the _Fortuna_ behind an asteroid, lying in wait for the _Minerva_—and one Tannhäuser blast had been good enough to deprive the red warship of its main weapon. Clearly they had no idea what they were up against.

The _Minerva_ swung around and angled its portside Tristan towards the _Fortuna_. Lyle smirked—resisting to the last. "Katherine, evasive maneuvers," he ordered of the ship's helmswoman, and the _Fortuna_ plunged down underneath the _Minerva_'s blast. "Zoe," he continued, and glanced down at the weapons officer, "target the Isolde on the _Minerva_'s portside wing, and then follow up with the Tristans."

The ship complied, the guns boomed, and three shells slammed into the _Minerva_'s port wing and blew off a chunk of its armor—and a moment later the Tristans came pulsing down and nearly blasted the rest of the wing clear off. Lyle frowned. So perhaps the ship's armor had been reinforced.

"No big deal," he said suddenly. "Katherine, move us into position. Zoe, charge the Tannhäuser and we'll finish them off."

—

With a thundering crash, the Vega Freedom Gundam brought down its saber onto the Infinite Justice's beam shield and hurled the red Gundam back. Athrun clenched his teeth and struggled to regain control—but not before the Freedom's DRAGOONs blew his beam rifle from his hand.

"Why are you doing this, Kira?" screamed Athrun, and he jerked back the Justice's controls to dodge Freedom's DRAGOON fire. "Soldiers are one thing, but why kill innocent people?"

The Destiny rocketed up from nowhere to pound the Freedom with an overhead sword stroke. Kira jetted to the side and let his DRAGOONs drive the Destiny back.

"He's just a murderer now, Athrun!" Shinn roared. "There's nothing left but to _kill him!_"

The Twilight came down next with a saber stroke from above, but the Freedom expertly parried the blow and slammed the Twilight in the chest with its knee, and with a flash of light his DRAGOONs darted in to pummel the Twilight and force it back.

"Even as the son of Patrick Zala, you wouldn't understand, Athrun," snarled Kira. The Freedom slammed its saber down against the Justice's blade. "Only blood will change the world. You should know that by now."

Athrun scowled back. "Blood changes nothing, Kira."

"That's where you're wrong!" Kira cried, and with a roar the Freedom surged forward and hurled the Justice away. "Not when you have our power!" The DRAGOONs blazed around the Justice and pounded it relentlessly. "If you're not going to understand..."

The Justice whirled away and the DRAGOONs pulled back.

"_Then I'll kill you!_"

The sky lit up as the DRAGOONs opened fire and blew apart the Justice's subflight lifter. Athrun screamed as his Gundam reeled from the blow; up above, Shinn and Emily darted apart as the Freedom roared up after them, DRAGOONs blazing.

"Who _is_ this guy?" Emily cried.

Shinn said nothing but only screamed in fury as he descended on the flashing white Gundam.

—

"Only one left!" cackled Kara Guinness in the cockpit of her untouched VaROZ mobile suit, as she circled with Gary and Juarez around the lone Gaia Gundam. The Gaia stormed forward, beam rifle drawn, and pounded Gary with beam rifle shots—only for Juarez to drop in and activate one of the beam claws on the VaROZ's feet to tear the rifle in two. Kara laughed and leveled off a shot, blowing off the Gaia's left-hand shoulder armor.

"_Finally_, a challenge!" cried Gary, and with a crash his VaROZ drew a beam saber in its left hand and smacked the Gaia's shield away.

The black mobile suit roared up over its enemies and drew its beam sabers, just as Juarez opened fire and landed a shot on the right-hand side of the Gaia's face. It jerked to the side as Kara followed up with a barrage of her own, and Gary slid in with a triumphant shout from behind with his beam saber raised—

Instead, the Gaia twirled its sabers around, caught Gary's blade behind its back, and then threw his VaROZ backward with a blast of thruster exhaust. Juarez and Kara reared back in surprise—just as the Gaia slammed both its sabers down onto Kara's beam shield.

"This must be that Extended," growled Juarez.

"An Extended!" snarled Kara, and with a savage yell she pushed the Gaia back. "Just a glorified Natural!"

Gary's VaROZ leapt up behind the Gaia with a scream from its pilot and brought its saber down—but the Gaia dove to the side and slammed the VaROZ in the chest with a kick as it passed by. Juarez leveled off his rifle and opened fire, but the Gaia darted away and went back on the attack.

Inside the Gaia, Stella clenched her fists around the Gundam's quaking controls and expertly dodged the three VaROZs' beam rifle blasts.

"You must think I'm weak," she grunted, "to think I'd be beaten by something like this!"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

As another salvo of missiles plowed into the _Minerva_'s starboard side, Meyrin could only cringe. The opening salvo had crippled her ship's maneuvering engines as well as deprived her of two of her main weapons. She had only a few missile tubes, a few CIWS guns, and one Tristan to work with.

"Captain Hawke," Rau's tinny voice broke in from Roxy's console, "I would suggest an immediate retreat. There is no way we can win this battle like this."

The _Fortuna_ pummeled the _Minerva_ with another salvo of missiles and Meyrin forced down the spike of fear in her chest. "They would follow us," she said, "unless..." She glanced up at Burt's console. "Burt, do an infrared scan of the enemy warship. Check their prow and see if they're charging their Tannhäuser."

Burt gasped in shock. "Affirmative, captain! Heat signature of the enemy warship's prow is white-hot!"

Meyrin glanced back at the bridge screen. "Malik, you're going to have to make this count. Our engines are dying on us." She glanced back up at the _Fortuna_. "And make sure they don't hit the stern!"

—

"And as for _you!_" Kira screamed, and with a crash the Vega Freedom brought its saber down against the Destiny's sword. "_You_ won't get a chance to interfere this time!"

Shinn jammed back the controls, but the DRAGOONs lined up around him for a killing salvo—

Instead, an ear-splitting scream sliced through the air, and with a thundering crash the Twilight Gundam slammed head-on into the Freedom and shouldered it aside, giving Shinn the chance he needed to dart upward and out of the DRAGOONs' path. Kira whipped around, saber blazing to life, but his blade slammed against the Twilight's saber instead.

"I don't know who you are," snarled Emily, her eyes dim as the seed burst before her, "but you're not going any farther than _this!_"

The Twilight leapt up and kicked the Freedom in the face, knocking it back. Kira ground his teeth and swarmed his DRAGOONs around the Twilight, blowing off its shield and beam rifle before it could react. Emily burst out of their web of beam fire and sailed back down towards the Freedom, beam saber raised.

"You're that 'Angel of Death' girl, aren't you?" muttered Kira, and the two Gundams came together with a crash. "How interesting. A little girl born and bred just to be a killer!" The Freedom surged forward and hurled the Twilight back. "And yet you're so powerful!" With a blaze, the Freedom pummeled the Twilight's beam shield with a plasma cannon volley. "I was only the Ultimate Coordinator, but _you!_" Emily clenched her teeth and pushed her saber forward to deflect the Freedom's killing stroke at her Gundam's waist. "_You're_ the ultimate _weapon!_"

"_Emily! Get away from him!_" roared Shinn, and with a crash the Destiny Gundam dropped into the fray with a vicious sword chop. Kira scowled and leapt back, and then his eyes went wide—

The Freedom shuddered as it recalled its DRAGOONs, backflipped away from the Destiny's next attack, dropped a combat flare into the Destiny's face, and took off with a burst of exhaust.

Kira keyed on the frequency to the _Fortuna_. "Lyle, recall the VaROZ team and get out of here now. That Alliance unit, the _Charlemagne_, is on its way."

On the auxiliary screen, Lyle blinked in disbelief. "But...sir, we've got the _Minerva_ on the ropes. One last push—"

"I said retreat," Kira interrupted. "We don't have the strength to take them on. If the _Minerva_ gets away we'll just follow them and finish them off somewhere else. Now do as I say."

As the Freedom rocketed away, Shinn and Emily watched it go with fury and fear swirling in their veins. Emily opened her helmet's visor and mopped the sweat from her face.

_The ultimate weapon, huh?_

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

"Docking maneuvers complete, captain," reported Vera on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge. In the captain's chair, Danilov sat back in satisfaction and glanced at the ship now attached to the _Charlemagne_'s port side. The bright yellow _Cornelius_-class ship had originally been designed as a support ship for the _Archangel_-class battleship. The theft of the _Cornelius_ itself had been an unfortunate setback, but only a temporary one—because now the class had several new members, including the _George C. Marshall_ that now had itself docked with the _Charlemagne_.

"Captain Bachmann," he said with a smile and turned towards the screen where the _Marshall_'s youthful captain's face was displayed, "I'm surprised you got here in one piece. ZAFT has brought space traffic all over the Earth Sphere to a standstill."

Bachmann merely shrugged. "We shipped out to Artemis on the 6th, before they had a chance to catch us. That's where we're heading next, once the resupply here is done." He arched an eyebrow. "I take it you're turning all those guns on ZAFT?"

Danilov glanced grimly in the direction of L5. ZAFT was out there; his real enemy, not the _Minerva_, not the Resistance, but the ones who would unquestionably destroy the world, were out there. At long last it had just boiled down to an enemy who was evil.

"That's the plan."

—

If Sven Cal Bayan had had any artistic appreciation, he would have called the mobile suit before him in the _Charlemagne_'s sprawling hangar a work of art. Built on the successful frame of the Windam with donations descended from the Blitz and Strike, the new mobile suit had everything the Destiny had. An anti-ship sword. A long-range cannon. Two imposing beam wings folded up on its backpack. It had speed and power that the engineers estimated was superior to the Resistance's wings of light. It had to be the finest mobile suit the Earth Alliance had ever produced.

Sven glanced down at the gantry at the sound of someone approaching, and arched an eyebrow in surprise at the sight of a bespectacled young woman in a flowing white lab coat coming to a stop next to him.

She cast him a winsome smile. "You must be Captain Bayan," she said, and extended her hand for Sven to awkwardly shake. "I'm Yukiko Nakajima," and she nodded at the slumbering Gundam, "and I see you've met my baby already."

"Your baby?"

"The GAT-X124 Crusader. My masterpiece." She turned with a loving smile towards the silent mobile suit. "I gave up an art major to pursue engineering, but they never did manage to take the artist out of me. She's beautiful, isn't she?"

Sven idly wondered what it was about the Phantom Pain that attracted crazy people. "As long as it helps me destroy the Destiny and the _Minerva_."

"Oh, that won't be a problem," chuckled Yukiko. "I'm looking forward to watching you take her for her first sortie." Her lips curled into a wicked grin. "My baby's been cooped up in the hangars and testing grounds too long, captain. I hope you take good care of her."

The dark eyes of the Crusader Gundam stared down at Sven as he nodded silently.

—

Shams Coza whistled approvingly from the _Charlemagne_'s observation deck as the mechanics unloaded his new Vanguard Gundam from the _Marshall_'s cargo hold. More or less built on the Calamity's frame, it had the quadruped transformation system that irked Shams so, but it also had speed and firepower—enough to keep up with the Destiny, perhaps.

Next to it was the sleek and thruster-laden Artemis Gundam, designed for close-quarters combat, and Shams looked it over and found it acceptable as well. At least it would probably keep her relatively safe. He would hate to have to deal with Sven on his own, after all. Shams cast a furtive look towards Mudie, on the other end of the deck, watching impassively as the mechanics unloaded her new machine. Perhaps she approved too.

He glanced over his shoulder as the deck door opened and Grey and Merau drifted in, along with a dark-haired girl that Shams recalled as being one of the new pilots. They stopped in surprise and perfunctorily saluted.

"I hear you guys have some new toys to play with too," Shams said with a smirk. "The Luna Project machines finally came through."

"We won't disappoint," Erin said with more confidence than Shams found convincing. He glanced over at Grey and Merau—the two who had at least fought the _Minerva_'s Gundams before and knew what they were in for.

"And I guess you two were there at Carpentaria," he went on. "How'd that work out for you?"

Grey furrowed his brow. "A Zamzazar unit knocked us both out of the sky while we were engaging the Twilight."

"What, like friendly fire?"

Merau crossed her arms. "That would imply they didn't intend to hit us. It clearly swatted us out of its path because we were honing in on its target."

"Now that's just bullshit," Shams started. "In the military code—"

"It doesn't matter," Mudie spoke up from the end of the room, and all eyes turned towards her in surprise. "There's only one rule on the battlefield. Kill or be killed." She glanced over at the two young ensigns. "And you two just got lucky."

Shams risked a smirk. "What, the way you did?"

Mudie shot him an angry look and turned her eyes back towards the Artemis Gundam.

—

"They're too young for this sort of thing."

The words hung in the air for a moment in the quiet bunk aboard the _Charlemagne_, where Kelly Maynard was drifting quietly through the air. On one of the beds lay Travis Alterman, feet kicked back, hands behind his head, looking bored out of his skull. He glanced at his commanding officer with a shrug.

"So what?"

"They can't possibly be up for the kind of war we're about to fight." Kelly glanced ruefully over her shoulder. "With ZAFT, I mean. They're crazy. All those times they talked about wiping out the Naturals...but this time they mean it."

"All the more reason to kill the fuckers now," Travis answered. "And if the kiddies don't get it now, they will, or they'll be dead. And either way, I ain't complaining."

Kelly was silent for a moment. "Captain Bayan seems to have faith in those two. Saiba and Seraux."

"Oh, Captain Bayan," snorted Travis, "yeah, that guy's nuts. Like he gives a shit. He's got that Crusader now, what does he need the rest of us for?"

"That's not how our army works, Travis."

"Of course it is."

"No, it's not. The Crusader may be advanced but it can't be in more than one place at once. We can. And our machines are specifically tuned to take down the Twilight. We're going to have to work together, and if you can't deal with that," she frowned, "then we'll find someone who can."

"Fine, fine, point made," Travis said with a laugh. "But I'll tell ya now, don't let anyone get in my Nebula Blitz's way. It's been a long time since I've had a good fight." He grinned. "And there's nothing I'd like better."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, en route to Lagrange Point 1**

"So," Roxy said loudly on the _Minerva_'s darkened bridge, "wanna hear how fucked up we are?"

Sitting in the captain's chair, Meyrin shot as furious a glare as she could manage up at the inhibition-free comm officer and managed to silence her. She glanced over at Abbey. "What are we looking at?"

Abbey slumped over her console in disbelief. "Damage to the ship: Tannhäuser lost, Isolde lost, starboard Tristan lost, all starboard missile tubes and ten on the port side lost, five CIWS emplacements lost." She ran a hand through her hair. "The Legend, Chaos, Abyss, and Savior are beyond salvage. The Justice has lost its subflight lifter. The Gaia got away with moderate damage, and the Destiny and Twilight had only light damage. We have a total of four functional mobile suits, one of which is severely limited now." She looked back at Meyrin. "We're going to have to get to Terminal, immediately."

Meyrin pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on. "Terminal's too far," she said. "That ZAFT ship retreated because the _Charlemagne_ had arrived in orbit. They'll probably be after us too. We have to stop someplace closer."

"Like where?" Chen asked. "There's only neutral colonies and Alliance bases in the entire region. If we're not going to Terminal, our only other option is Barnacle—"

"And that's all the way at L3," Malik added. "We're closest to L1. Maybe there's something there."

"There is," Meyrin said quietly. "There's Arnhelm."

The bridge crew went silent as that name sank into their minds. Meyrin squeezed her eyes shut and figured that a headache was the least of her worries now. Driven to the specter of docking at Arnhelm for repairs...that was almost as bad as taking her chances with that ZAFT ship or the _Charlemagne_. Of all the favors to have to call in...

"Well," Abbey said haltingly, "the good news about that is that they enough discipline over their men to keep them from attacking us."

"Yeah, _really_ good discipline," Roxy scoffed.

"If any of you know of some shadow port or something that I don't know about, now would be a great time to speak up," Meyrin shot back. "Otherwise, we have no choice. Malik, set course for the Arnhelm Colony."

She sat back as the _Minerva_'s engines painfully rumbled to life and hoped that it would all be quiet.

—

_I know we were going to finish it together, but at least the Stargazer will survive this way,_ he had said. _Just get out of here, and survive, and—_

Selene McGriff closed her eyes and brushed away the tears. Sol had not deserved that fate. ZAFT had gotten their hands on the Stargazer...but Sol was right. Selene had the Stargazer's schematics and research data on a flash drive, safe in her pocket. She had the knowledge and expertise. If anyone could rebuild the Stargazer from scratch—as there was no longer any other option—it would be her.

But Sol...he had wanted to see it complete. He had delighted in "teaching" its AI. He had promised her that one day they would watch together as the Stargazer took off for its endless mission.

Instead, she had to "just get out of here, and survive."

She opened the door to the ship's hangar and looked around at what had become of the _Minerva_'s famous Gundams. Four of them were damaged beyond repair, by the looks of it; the other four seemed salvageable, and they were the ones the crew was working on most feverishly.

_Just get out of here, and survive, and__—_

Selene rubbed the side of her head for a moment. In normal times, she would have never thought of doing this...but these were no longer normal times. Opposing violence didn't mean ruling it out. And in a war like this, pacifism only aided those who were thirstiest for blood.

She caught one of the mechanics' arms as he drifted by, and brought herself face to face with a dark-skinned young man. "Excuse me," she said, "I know I'm technically just a passenger, but I'd like to help with the repairs."

The mechanic stammered in surprise. "Err, well, do you have the background—"

"It's alright," another voice cut in, and an older man drifted up to the gantry and hopped over the railing. "She's from the DSSD. She was an engineer on the Stargazer." He turned towards her and gestured towards one of the mobile suits on the far side of the hangar. "That machine you rode in on earlier, the Twilight. Its pilot could use a hand on the diagnostics. Can you do that?"

Selene followed his gesture down the hangar and found the Twilight Gundam.

"I'll get right on it," she said, and pushed off for the Gundam that had brought her here. After all, she'd never had a chance to properly say thanks.

—

Shinn Asuka hated it when the memories returned. They always returned in a rush, and never in a way that made sense. A sensory overload of suffering. He felt the pain again on that smoking hillside in Orb, surrounded by his family's mutilated bodies; he felt it again in Antarctica, grieving before the wreckage of the _Kasselheim_; he felt Lacus Clyne disappear. Kira Yamato had returned. The man who had taken so much from him now had so much more power—more power than Shinn had, power enough to nearly take everything from him again.

At his side on the interior observation deck, Stella looked up towards the Earth. "The Freedom was stronger this time," she murmured.

Shinn clenched his fists around the railing. "Don't worry about it, Stella. I'll still protect you."

"But who will protect Shinn?"

That he didn't know. "We just need to get to Terminal," he continued. "We can take care of things there."

Stella drifted around him and put her hands on his shoulders. "Stella will be okay," she started quietly, "but Shinn is sad..."

"That's nothing new."

"Shinn shouldn't be sad all the time." She looked back up at the Earth, at the blue waters that looked so calm from so far away. "It makes Stella sad..."

Shinn closed his eyes. "I know, Stella. I'm sorry." _But it won't change,_ he thought, _until I've destroyed him._

—

"You know," Athrun muttered quietly, and Viveka glanced down at him on the Infinite Justice's chest by its cockpit hatch, "he used to be my friend."

"The guy piloting that white mobile suit?"

"Him." Athrun stared forward with a hurricane of emotion churning within. "He was the guy who commandeered the Strike and used it on Heliopolis six years ago. We were best friends."

Viveka studied his haggard face for a moment. "Were?"

"He killed his sister and Lacus Clyne," Athrun said with a resigned wave of his hand. "We're not friends anymore."

"Then what happened to him?"

At that, Athrun cast a hateful glance across the hangar at the ruined hulk of the Legend Gundam. "You asked me once why I have a problem with Rau," he said. "That's why. Rau was the one who drove us apart and turned Kira into..." He floundered for words for a moment. "Whatever the hell he is now. I don't recognize him anymore."

Viveka glanced skeptically across the hangar. "How did he do that?"

"I don't know. I guess he blamed me for killing someone important to him. Or something." He shook his head. "My best friend would not have ordered that attack on the DSSD or attacked civilians or any of the stuff that ZAFT is doing now. And I have Rau to thank for that."

"Athrun—" Viveka started.

"But he won't get to pull off whatever it is he's planning now," Athrun went on. "Not while I'm here."

—

_So, you've grown stronger. All very good. You'll do well._

Rau Le Creuset drifted through his bunk with a grin, pondering the changes to his calculations and the exciting possibilities offered by this new information. Kira Yamato's Newtype powers had strengthened, and he had a new, more powerful, more destructive Gundam. On the downside, he was lost to Rau's machinations—but that made him useful in a different way. No, a man like him would never be useless.

He would be useful now, not as a tool of his own but as a tool for someone else. He turned his thoughts to the flickering presence of Emily, somewhere around the hangar. Kira Yamato had been the Ultimate Coordinator, the supreme expression of the Cosmic Era's greed and cheapening of human life. Kira Yamato's creation had fed on the lives of his less than perfect brothers and sisters. The Cosmic Era had turned human life into a waste product for the creation of a genetic superman that perfectly embodied the will of a rich customer and an obsessed scientist.

But Emily...she was different. She was the supreme expression of the Cosmic Era's lust for blood, its will to destroy. Only an era that craved weapons to secure a world where it could pursue its perfect mastery of nature would create something like her...and it was her, and not Kira, who made the ideal vehicle for his plans.

Yes, Kira had not been the most ideal after all, and had Rau known that earlier he would have focused on finding Emily while she was at her most malleable. Rau had never quite stamped out the need for dependence in Kira, and that had given Valentine an opening to twist Kira away from him—because Valentine evoked in him the same feelings as that Natural girl, and there was no way Rau could have done that himself.

Emily, though...she was even better suited to this than Kira. Kira had led a fairly idyllic existence until fate found him at Heliopolis; Emily had not. In the final reckoning, Kira was not intended by his creators to be a tool for others' ambitions; Emily was. He would lose some of the irony in the Cosmic Era's great symbol of greed falling from his grasp...but the specter of the Angel of Death riding the wings of Armageddon to deliver judgment was just as good.

Rau Le Creuset smiled as he turned over Emily's presence in his Newtype's mind. She did not quite understand that yet...but with Kira Yamato and Valentine and ZAFT and this war and her own past and that _other_ presence he sensed, far away, pulsing inside the armored shell of Messiah...she _would_.

—

"So," Roxy said, "how ya feeling?"

Strapped down in an infirmary bed and swathed with bandages, Sting Oakley groaned as intelligently as he could.

"What happened...?"

"Chaos got trashed by those three silver machines," Roxy explained with a shrug. "Abes says there's no salvaging it, but we're heading for Arnhelm for repairs and maybe they'll have a mobile suit to let you borrow." She glanced over her shoulder. "Doc says you'll be out here soon, anyway."

Sting glanced across the infirmary—at the bed where Auel was strapped down with an oxygen mask over his face.

"And him...?"

"Abyss got totaled by the Freedom," said Roxy. "He's got a concussion and a bunch of lacerations. He's gonna be there a while, but he'll be okay." She looked back at Sting. "And at least we're not being tailed."

Sting almost sneered. "Thank God for little things." He looked down at himself. "I don't believe it. I..._failed._"

"Hey now, none of that, or I'll get the Doc to make with the Bring-Down Blue," Roxy spoke up. "Besides, y'know that upgrade for your mobile suit you were always bitching about? You're, like, guaranteed to get it now."

"Wonderful," Sting muttered, and covered his eyes with his free hand. "So I just have to rot here and think about how I got my ass kicked until we get to Terminal."

"Well, you _could_," Roxy agreed with a shrug, "but there's probably better ways to spend your time. Just saying."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I dunno. Sleeping. Eating. Masturbating. Whatever you guys do with your off time."

Sting glared. "Fuck you."

"Oh, so you're into the hot nurse thing, huh?"

"S-Shut up."

Roxy grinned victoriously and put a hand on his shoulder. "Well, seriously, you got your ass kicked in an aging mobile suit against three new, modern, high-performance machines. You're still alive and so are we. Don't worry about it."

Sting looked away in frustration. "Easy for you to say."

—

Emily looked up in surprise at the feeling of a human life approaching her battered Twilight's cockpit hatch. True to type, there was someone there—Selene, the woman she had rescued from the battlefield at Troya Station, landing deftly on the open hatch.

"Hi," she started with a smile. "The chief mechanic said you needed a hand with the diagnostics?"

Emily paused for a moment. "You're the one I brought in from the battlefield."

"Yeah. Glad to meet you face to face." Selene put her hand forward for an awkward handshake. "You know, you're not so scary for an Angel of Death."

"I get that a lot." Emily waved a hand tiredly at the Twilight's console. "This thing has me all confused."

"I'll take a look," Selene offered, and they switched places. Emily turned around and watched as Selene settled herself into the Twilight's cockpit seat and got to work.

"Why are you helping us?" Emily started. Selene glanced up at her in surprise.

"Shouldn't I? Earn my keep and all."

"But it's not really a problem that you're here."

Selene looked back down at the console, and Emily frowned at the tinge of sadness to her presence. "I was told to survive," she said, "and out there you guys came close to getting killed. And besides," she looked back up with a sad smile, "when we sent out that distress signal, to be honest, I didn't expect anyone to answer it. But you did." She returned her attention to the console. "So while I'm here, I'll help you out. I don't want to contribute to a war, but if both sides are going to try to destroy the world, I guess sitting on the sidelines doesn't really help that."

Emily looked down at her and felt the resignation from her. "But you weren't researching weapons."

"You saw the Stargazer in action. It was built for exploration, but it made for a formidable weapon and it might've escaped if the energy had lasted." She paused to rub her eyes. "And there are combat applications, I suppose. But," she looked back up at Emily, "it's a great power. A combat application of the Voiture Lumiere would make you just about unstoppable on the battlefield, but you'd have power and...well, that means you have to be careful with it."

"I know all about having power," Emily said quietly.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, en route to Lagrange Point 5**

"In my professional opinion," said Captain Hayes of the _Seraphim_'s crack marine contingent, "we've gotten all we can from this guy."

Standing in a harshly-lit interrogation room deep inside the _Seraphim_, Varder and Lilith looked down in distaste at the bound and beaten Sol Ryuune L'ange, slumped in a chair with blood streaming from his battered face, Hayes standing ramrod-straight nearby.

"He was the Stargazer's test pilot," Varder grumbled. "He _should_ know more. Maybe we just haven't forced it out of him yet."

"Preliminary analysis of the documents we seized says no," Lilith said. "He was the test pilot and he was responsible for inputting data into the AI, but he may not really know anything we don't already have."

"We did capture the Stargazer prototype _and_ the contents of Troya's computer core," Hayes pointed out. "All things considered, we don't really need him."

Varder, Lilith, and Hayes exchanged meaningful glances, and then the green-haired man stepped up in front of Sol and drew a handgun from inside his uniform.

Eyes catching the dull glint of metal, Sol looked up with a smirk. "You'd kill a fellow Coordinator?"

The click sounded through the room as Varder removed the safety. "No use for a race-traitor. Nothing personal, though."

"Then go ahead," Sol said with a harsh laugh. "Kill me."

As Varder put the gun to his head, he smiled.

_At least Selene got away_.

The gunshot rang out.

—

**Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

The paper fluttered back down to the desk from the white-gloved hand that held it, and with a grunt, the man behind the desk in a medal and ribbon-studded dark blue naval uniform sat back. He glanced at the officer before him, the hawk-nosed man in an old Earth Alliance uniform with the collar tabs of a major.

"And they agreed to it?" the older man asked with a tinge of annoyance in his voice.

The major nodded. "How could they not? Between that ZAFT ship and the _Charlemagne_ they would've been destroyed outright if they'd gone anywhere else."

The old man stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I don't like having the _Minerva_ here, Lawson. They attract attention, and we've only kept this place secure by avoiding scrutiny."

"I agree, sir, but we couldn't have very well told them no. Not without risking our supply lines from Chiao Xu."

"Chiao Xu," muttered the old man, "damned fool. But you're right." He glanced back up at Lawson. "Do you think they would object to our practices?"

"Undoubtedly, but the purge will have to take place anyway. We can't afford to let the agitators have their way." He smirked. "I'm sure Captain Hawke and her minions will be too busy to worry about us anyway."

The old man slowly got to his feet with the help of a cane. "One can hope," he muttered.

—

To be continued...


	6. Phase 06: The Arnhelm Colony

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 06 - The Arnhelm Colony

—

**April 14th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

In space, it was always a little different.

The _Minerva_ had made seven sojourns in space since the end of the Junius War, and this was the eighth. In those three years Meyrin Hawke had become relatively well-acquainted with the new order that ZAFT's defeat and the Alliance's ascendancy had created. The Alliance ruled the colonies with an iron fist, yes...but it ruled _everyone_ with an iron fist. And some people didn't mind being ruled with an iron fist. The affluent citizens of certain colonies administrated by the Atlantic Federation, the Eurasian Federation, and the Republic of East Asia had everything they could have wanted, so who needed political freedoms and legal rights?

But life in space was still life on the frontier, and on the frontier anything was possible. Some colonies were overlooked, and none more so than in Lagrange Point 1, where the writhing tendrils of the Debris Belt choked trade lanes and occasionally reached out to menace colonies. This was the hideout of many criminal groups, overlooked by the world's powers, and as a result the Resistance had gained strength in this desolate region of space.

Meyrin sat back uncomfortably on the _Minerva_'s darkened bridge. Her ship's destination was the Arnhelm Colony...and she apprehensively considered the possibility of once again having to fight a fellow Resistance force. If it came to that, her ship was in no condition for such a battle. Not with most of its weapons and half of its mobile suit contingent out of commission.

At her station, Abbey leaned forward with a heavy sigh. "Arnhelm is run by Marko Jeremiah, isn't it," she said.

"'The Admiral' Marko Jeremiah," Roxy corrected with as much venom as her voice could muster.

"I know," Meyrin answered. The Arnhelm Colony was officially a massive orbiting refugee camp for seven million people. War orphans and displaced persons had streamed there because it was out of the way and undesired by the warring armies rampaging throughout the Earth Sphere, but those very qualities had been a decidedly mixed blessing. Lack of interest by either side of the wars made it forgotten to all but the occasional humanitarian group...and to people with all sorts of intentions.

Meyrin swallowed her anxiety as best she could. They also had a port and a group of competent mechanics that could repair her battleship enough to get it to Terminal, near Lagrange Point 3. She would just have to accept it.

—

"It's not a total loss."

Shinn Asuka glanced up at Athrun's voice in the crew lounge, and found the blue-haired Coordinator drifting into the chair on the other side of the table.

"What do you mean 'not a total loss?'" Shinn snorted. "We lost half of our Gundams and your unit's subflight lifter got blown up."

"But we're not dead and we've still got four mobile suits to work with."

Shinn crossed his arms impatiently and sat back. "Doesn't make me feel better about it."

Athrun leaned forward. "Shinn, it's not worth hating Kira anymore. I know you have blood with him at least as bad as mine, but there's nothing left of him. He's not even a human anymore. He's just a shell, filled with someone else's intentions."

"He's still the one who killed my family and friends."

"Yes, but hating him is a waste of energy at this point."

Shinn eyed Athrun in surprise for a moment. "I would've thought you'd be more pissed off by all this."

"I know that he has to be destroyed," Athrun answered with a shrug. "I know nothing is going to change his mind, and he has power, and that all makes him dangerous. I don't know what's making him tick, but he has to be stopped before the takes the entire world with him. He was the one who killed Cagalli, and that's why I'll never forgive him. But hating him..." He shrugged again. "I'm tired of it."

After a moment's silence, Shinn heaved a sigh. "I'm not."

—

"Is Sting okay?" Stella whispered, drifting over the infirmary bed where Sting Oakley lay with lacerations aplenty and resting off the effects of a nasty concussion. He shrugged.

"As okay as I can expect," he said, and glanced at Viveka over Stella's shoulder. "Arnhelm, is it?"

"Yeah," Viveka said with a nod. "Anything I should know about them?"

"Only that they're a bunch of fucking fascists. It's a refugee colony and the guy in charge, Jeremiah, rules the place like he's a god or something."

"Oh, fun."

"Is Auel gonna be okay?" Stella interrupted, and pointed anxiously at the sleeping Extended. Sting glanced over and smirked.

"Yeah, he'll wake up soon. Concussion. But whatever." He looked up at Viveka again. "Your unit got totaled too?"

Viveka heaved a melodramatic sigh. "The only ones who came through unscathed were Stella, Shinn, and Emily. Even Athrun got knocked around." She looked up at Stella and arched an eyebrow. "Although _you_ certainly kicked some ass."

"They weren't scary," Stella said over her shoulder as she drifted towards Auel.

—

The Legend Gundam had been reduced to little more than a torso and most of a leg. That was a little disappointing for Rau Le Creuset, floating over the ruins of his trusty machine inside the _Minerva_'s hangar. The Legend had served him well and kept him alive on a battlefield where his presence was increasingly necessary to make his plans work. He could not afford to leave Emily on her own. Not to fight Kira. He was a failure, but he was still dangerous, and although someone—Emily, Shinn, Athrun, himself—would finally exterminate that failure, he could still do incalculable damage.

But it was not all hopeless. All they had to do was get to Terminal, and there awaited a new sword for Emily to take up against these powerful invaders from ZAFT. Captain Hawke had mentioned something about additional units; perhaps if their stay at Terminal could be long enough, they would have the resources and crew to build even more new machines to deal with the leaps ZAFT had made at Mars. And surely the Alliance had its own next-generation machines. Surely this war would escalate. ZAFT was doing its damnedest to make that so.

He glanced over at the Twilight Gundam across the hangar. Emily was still working there, with that DSSD researcher she had picked up at Troya. That was another stroke of luck. Ms. McGriff was one of the core inventors of the Voiture Lumiere drive, and its combat applications, from what Rau understood of the system, were staggering. If the _Minerva_ could get those two to Terminal, then Emily would have power beyond all reckoning.

And that, really, was what his plan was all about.

—

"Basically," Selene explained, with herself and Emily floating by the Twilight's cockpit, "this mobile suit is studded with receptors for a DRAGOON system. It has them all throughout the body and they all respond to your brainwaves. Instead of mounting them in separate units, they're all mounted in the body and connected to the thrusters and weapons and extremities and so on. You can move them all with just thoughts, which is why the Twilight has such higher performance than the others." She paused and grinned ironically. "Which I guess means you're some kind of Newtype or something."

Emily smiled sheepishly. "I guess it does." She looked back towards the Twilight. "But that means only Shinn and I can keep up with those new units from ZAFT, doesn't it?"

"If we can get to wherever it is we're going," Selene said, "then it won't matter."

"Don't you want us to take you to the other evacuees from Troya?"

Selene shook her head sadly. "What would be the point? ZAFT captured the Stargazer and Troya's computer core. I have the blueprints and research, but we'd need another research station and resources and another laser satellite."

They both stared down awkwardly at the silent Twilight moment, before Emily looked up. "Why were you ejected from the Stargazer anyway?"

Selene smiled sadly. "Because Sol was a little too brave for his own good."

"Wha—?"

"The test pilot." She looked back up at Emily with a tear in her eye. "My friend. He wanted to complete the Stargazer with me, but ZAFT attacked and we took it out to fight our way through and escape. We ran out of energy, so he ejected me, and told me to survive, so I could rebuild the Stargazer someday." She shrugged. "And that's why I'm helping you. I have to survive, for his sake, so that I can build the Stargazer again and it can carry his spirit to the stars, where it always wanted to be."

Emily frowned. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You've probably got friends to remember too, I'm sure."

Faces drifted by in Emily's memory: Kyali, Aza, Isaac... "Yes," she murmured, "I do."

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

It was not victory.

Kira Yamato sat in his office, clenching and unclenching his fists. He had destroyed half of the _Minerva_'s Gundams, but it was not victory, because they were still alive. Rau. Athrun. Shinn. All of them. They still lived. He had forfeited a wonderful opportunity.

In front of his desk, Kayla watched him with a nervous expression. "We'll have other chances to destroy the _Minerva_, sir," she spoke up. "The sensor officer projected their course to take them to L1. We could follow them—"

"No," Kira said suddenly. "We have a schedule."

Athrun had taken Fllay from him. Shinn had stood in his way at Solomon's Sword, kept him from protecting it, forced him to join his fellow Coordinators in that miserable exile to Mars, forced him to become this twisted parody of himself. Rau had brought him along this path and abandoned him at the final battle, abandoned him for that miserable little Angel of Death. He would cast himself through the fire, but he would never forgive them for making it necessary.

"Will we proceed to the Gagarin City colony, then?" Kayla asked.

Kira nodded painfully. "Send up the order to the bridge. Proceed to L4 and target the Gagarin City space colony, and charge the Tannhäuser. It's an Island Three type. It can be destroyed by punching through the mirror and breaking apart the central axis. We probably won't even need to launch the mobile suits."

Kayla saluted and excused herself, leaving Kira alone in his office, seething with anger.

—

It was not victory, but it was close enough.

Kara Guinness floated up eagerly in front of her slumbering VaROZ unit. The silver mobile suit, built from heavily-modified parts of the GuAIZ and CGUE with an improved version of the GOUF's flight pack on its back, had acquitted itself well in battle against the _Minerva_. It had taken down the Chaos and forced the Gaia on the defensive—a little longer and, she knew, they would have destroyed that black Gundam as well. It bore all the lessons and ideas of ZAFT's experience in battle at Mars, and some of the technological secrets hidden in Vargas's fortress on Deimos.

She glanced over her shoulder as Gary came to a stop next to her. "So what do you think of the Earth Sphere?"

Gary merely shrugged. "I'm not so impressed. I'd rather fight that Angel of Death the Naturals are so afraid of, really."

"Oh, her," Kara said with a grin, "yeah...she'd be something." She looked back up at the VaROZ's darkened monoeye. "We'll get our chance. We've still got orders to take out the _Minerva_."

"Then why did we retreat when we had our golden opportunity?"

Kara glanced over her shoulder distastefully. "The _Charlemagne_."

"That giant battleship the Naturals made?"

"That's the one."

She crossed her arms and glowered up at her VaROZ. That was another enemy to fight. The Naturals' conceit, just waiting to be laid low.

—

"That thing is absurd."

Carlos Morales crossed his arms defiantly and stared up in obvious disdain at the intel images of the mighty _Charlemagne_ on the _Fortuna_'s auxiliary screen. In the captain's chair, Lyle arched an eyebrow at his executive officer. "I suppose," he agreed. "They built it to take down the _Minerva_ and focused on countering its speed and maneuverability with overwhelming firepower. And apparently that has more or less paid off."

"A kilometer long," Morales snorted. "And look at all those guns. They really don't need all that to take down a _Minerva_-class ship."

Lyle studied the images for a moment. The _Charlemagne_ had a second role in the Alliance military as well, however—that of sheer crushing intimidation. When this massive black warship loomed over the horizon, those who laid eyes on it were supposed to fear. And fear was the natural response to a warship with so many guns and so many weapons. It was the natural choice for the flagship of an army whose professional method of operation was to induce fear among the people—fear so paralyzing that resistance would be impossible.

"The _Minerva_ survived its battles with the _Charlemagne_," Lyle said, "and being ZAFT's premier unit, we will likely be expected to deal with it at some point. We can study and improve upon the _Minerva_'s tactics for when that time comes."

"Then why did we forfeit our chance to destroy the _Minerva_?" Morales sputtered.

Lyle rubbed the side of his head in frustration. "The Marshal refuses to engage the _Charlemagne_ alone. He said he won't take it on without at least six ships running backup." He shook his head. "I can't say I blame him, but to give up our chance to get rid of the _Minerva_..."

And of course, Lyle needed no extrasensory powers to tell from the bubbling rage in Kira's eye when he had returned that he was the least happy about this of all.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

Colonel David Whittington was the gray-haired man in a black Phantom Pain uniform and dark gray service coat on the _Charlemagne_'s auxiliary screen, and it was he who returned Danilov's perfunctory salute. He looked as grim as his assignment. War did that to men.

"Colonel Whittington," Danilov said with a cordial smile. "I apologize in advance for horning in on your turf, but the _Minerva_ is heading in your direction, and I'm on the scent. They were badly damaged by a ZAFT unit that I can't catch up to, but the time is right to make the kill."

Whittington arched a silver eyebrow. "I'm surprised Headquarters has you still _on_ their scent."

"Officially," replied Danilov with a shrug, "I'm to engage ZAFT forces wherever I encounter them. But I'm also to get rid of the _Minerva_ as originally ordered." He paused for a moment as Whittington nodded to himself. "What's new with your assignment at L1?"

On the screen, Whittington glanced around wearily at the bridge of the _Nelson_-class cruiser of the Space Force that was his flagship. "We've been moved into the Debris Belt branch closest to the Arnhelm Colony," he said. "For the past three weeks there hasn't been any Resistance activity here, but the situation is dicey. Arnhelm has seven million refugees in it, and the colony is one of those fragile Heliopolis models that relies on a central axial shaft for structural support. It wouldn't take much to rip the entire colony apart, and that would probably kill everyone inside."

Danilov kept his surprise professionally masked. It was strange for a Phantom Pain commander to be so concerned with the welfare of refugees. Usually it was the business of Phantom Pain commanders to _create_ refugees.

"What do you propose, then?" he asked.

"Keep the _Charlemagne_ far enough away to prevent a provocation," Whittington answered. "You can link up with the _Tripoli_ if you like. The _Minerva_ seems to be heading for Arnhelm, so if they're going to dock here, like I predict, we could have a pretext for storming the colony. But we would have to do it carefully."

"I agree. But how?"

Whittington's expression darkened. "We had better figure it out soon, captain."

—

"Man, Sven, you just attract all the crazy ones!" cackled Shams as he drifted down the _Charlemagne_'s corridors with Mudie in tow. Sven glanced in annoyance over his shoulder and did his best not to whirl around and snap Shams' neck. "First there's Irene, then there's this Yukiko gal! That's pretty impressive!"

"Another noisy passenger," Mudie sighed. "What's she even here for?"

"Evaluation and fine-tuning of the Crusader after its first combat sorties," Sven answered. "She was one of the core researchers in assembling its beam wing drive and control system."

"What, are the _Charlemagne_'s mechanics not good enough?" Shams quipped.

"She also had a hand in the Vanguard and Artemis's development," Sven added with a testy glance, "so you had best be grateful."

"Whatever you say, mom."

Sven bit back a scowl. Soon, he reminded himself, he would prove to his superiors that he no longer needed Shams and Mudie. Maybe they would get killed on the battlefield, maybe he could shift their tactics so that he no longer needed to deal with them, maybe they would be reassigned...but with the Crusader, he would need nobody else.

_Keep telling yourself that_, chuckled the little boy.

—

Grey Saiba drifted up over the silent face of his Regen Duel Gundam, slumbering in the _Charlemagne_'s cavernous hangar. His work for the day on its operating system was complete, and now he sat back to admire his new machine. His hands itched to hold its controls and take it into battle...but not yet, and if the captain's briefing that morning had been any indication, his wait would soon be over.

He glanced over his shoulder as Erin came to a stop next to him with a smile. "Thought I'd find you here. We're going to be after the _Minerva_ again, you know."

"I do." He looked back down at his new machine's dark eyes. "A reunion with the Angel of Death."

Erin pursed her lips. "Sounds personal."

"She's a pretty teenage girl, as old as both of us," Grey answered with a shrug.

"A pretty girl, huh?" asked Erin, with a suspicious look and a raised eyebrow. "Wonder how she got so far..."

Grey eyed Erin carefully for a moment. "She's still dangerous. Don't underestimate her. That's how people die."

"I know."

"Everyone forgets that when they see her. Her face or her mobile suit." He crossed his arms, taking in the hulking form of his new Gundam. Of course she wouldn't fear it, or any of the other Luna Project machines. But that would not stop him—no, not after Volgograd and Novorossiysk and Carpentaria. He had seen her face, and it haunted him—but perhaps these Gundams would dislodge it from his memory.

"Why would you know what her face looks like anyway?" Erin asked suddenly, and Grey glanced at her with a darkening expression.

"A transmission," he said quietly, "at Volgograd."

"At Volgograd?" Erin blinked in disbelief. "You mean when the Resistance attacked the city, and—"

Grey stared at her in shock for a moment. "What do you mean—is that what they told you what happened?"

"Isn't it what happened? The Resistance started attacking the city for some reason and the _Charlemagne_ moved in to protect it."

The memories came flooding back in a senseless rush and Grey could only laugh harshly. "That," he said, "is what I _wish_ had happened." He looked down at his hands. "So that I could still sleep at night."

He whirled around and headed for the hangar doors with a scowl.

_Angel of Death...don't make me regret which side I'm on._

—

**Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

Meyrin Hawke swallowed her pride and stuck her hand forward on the docking tube stretching from her battered warship to the Arnhelm Colony's space dock.

In front of her stood the man that called his place home, and the man that this place called master. The wizened and wiry Marko Jeremiah, in his opulent blue naval uniform and leaning heavily on a cane, shook Meyrin's hand quickly and took a step back. Meyrin noted in the back of her mind the conspicuous presence of well-armed guards everywhere. It was always good to have a relationship based on mutual trust.

"Welcome to the Arnhelm Colony," Jeremiah said, and grimly swept his arm out over the tableau of Arnhelm's port. "Our mechanical staff will help your own with repairs, and you can take on supplies here for as long as your stay will last. Make yourselves at home." He motioned for Meyrin and Abbey to follow him—and his heavily-armed guards. "Other than the obvious, what brings you Arnhelm?"

Meyrin glanced at Abbey for a moment. "We were assisting the DSSD's Troya Station at L4 when a ZAFT unit ambushed us," she explained. "Commander Vedlow's flagship escaped to Terminal with Troya's evacuees, but ZAFT captured DSSD's research from Troya."

"How terrible," Jeremiah remarked. "ZAFT is certainly acting barbaric these days. I hardly recognize them anymore. Only three years ago they were sending forces to help break up Junius 7 when those terrorists pushed it towards the Earth."

"It's to be expected from an army whose homeland has been destroyed," Abbey put in. "It will only get worse from here on out."

Meyrin thought back bitterly to those terrorists, the ones who had spouted Patrick Zala as their justification, that they needed to march down the path at which he had pointed and render the Naturals unable to ever threaten the Coordinators again. But it was not the Naturals who had fired the Requiem and destroyed the PLANTs. That she knew—because down below on the blue planet, there was Admiral Pegodin and Colonel Chekhov and Commandant al-Imad and so many others. They did not deserve ZAFT's wrath anymore than the innocent Coordinators of the PLANTs had deserved the Requiem.

It was something to fight for. This war had no shortage of that.

"We will not be here long, admiral," Meyrin said. "Just long enough to make sufficient repairs to get us to Terminal. The _Charlemagne_ arrived in space recently, and the ZAFT unit that attacked us will probably be back for more. Arnhelm would be endangered if we stayed for long."

Jeremiah said nothing, and only looked grimly ahead.

—

Arnhelm Colony was a hellhole.

That was the most charitable conclusion Emily von Oldendorf could reach as she wandered the streets of Arnhelm, a gun and four extra clips tucked inside her coat. Shinn had insisted that she go armed if she was going to go exploring, and now she understood why. The colony's buildings were crumbling. The weather controls had apparently stopped responding a long time ago, because the colony seemed to be stuck in a perpetual cloudy, blustery day. The mirrors were cracked and reflected only some of the sunlight that reached them into the colony interior. It was cold, it was windy, it was sort of like being back in Reykjavik...which meant Emily liked none of it.

There was also a preponderance of armed guards on the streets, in a motley array of uniforms from throughout the Earth Sphere. They, she guessed, were Jeremiah's security forces—and she had heard plenty about _them_.

Emily rounded a corner and found herself face to face with two brown-haired teenage boys, both of them staring at her with the wide eyes of recognition.

"Are you—" started the one on the right, in the green flak jacket, before the one on the left stepped forward with a wide grin.

"Holy shit, I didn't think they'd be letting you out like this!" the second one laughed. "Wow, the Angel of Death—"

Emily promptly shoved them both into a nearby alley. "Not so loud," she hissed, "this isn't the place to be attracting attention."

The second boy awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "Right, right. Anyway," he stuck his hand forward for a handshake with a broad grin, "the name's Trojan. Trojan Noiret. Your reputation precedes you, Miss Oldendorf."

"I'm Rax Falkner," the second one said, shaking Emily's hand as well. "I keep Trojan from doing stupid shit."

"He thinks he keeps me from doing shit he thinks is stupid," Trojan interrupted with a dismissive wave. "But what did they let you out of the _Minerva_ for? I figured you guys would be on lockdown in there."

Emily glanced around, at the unforgiving clouds overhead and the crumbling buildings around her. "I _was_ coming out for some fresh air," she said, "but I don't know how fresh the air really is here."

"Not very," Rax said.

"Well, the air sucks," Trojan said, "but the company's not too bad, eh?"

Emily glanced over the thin teenager and shrugged. It could be worse, after all.

—

"So you had friends in ZAFT, huh," Viveka said quietly, as she and Athrun drifted down the hallways of Arnhelm Colony's sprawling spaceport.

"Friends, hell," Athrun muttered, "I was their commanding officer for a while." He frowned. "They're all dead now, aren't they..."

Viveka furrowed her brow. "You sure do dwell on the dead people in your life a lot."

Athrun closed his eyes with a smirk. That was something Dearka would have said. Sometimes it seemed like he was speaking to her through Viveka. Hell, sometimes it seemed like they had sent him Viveka, so that the last member of their mobile suit team wouldn't go stark raving mad in his own survivor's guilt.

"It's different when you're a commanding officer," he said with a sigh. "In training they drill into you the idea of responsibility, for your men and your mission. So when they get killed..." He shrugged. "It sticks with you."

"_Everything_ sticks with you."

"Well, you try being raised by a military man and see how much of the military doesn't rub off on you."

Viveka sighed. "It's like you just refuse to be content or something. I know they all meant a lot to you, and I know your past is pretty shitty, but you can't spend your entire life like this."

"No," Athrun said, and he glanced out through the spaceport windows towards the cloudy colony interior, "but I've been in one long war since the Bloody Valentine seven years ago. And until that war is over..."

He shook his head and continued on.

—

"Fascinating," murmured Rau as he drifted over the scorched _Minerva_'s battered prow, with Selene not far away. He flipped through a laptop and the contents of Selene's flash drive—the Stargazer's blueprints, the Voiture Lumiere system. "The laser propulsion system can be modified for applications that don't use solar wind."

"It won't achieve the astronomical speeds the Stargazer can reach," Selene explained with a shrug, "but it can outperform most mobile suits in combat, from what I understand of contemporary MS performance."

Rau grinned. "At Terminal they are constructing a new Gundam, tentatively for Emily," he said. "But the main core is not yet complete and it remains open to modification. And after the performance of that white mobile suit from that blue ZAFT warship..."

"You want me to put the Voiture Lumiere on that Gundam," Selene said with raised eyebrows. "You know it's an incredible power. Not to be given lightly." She narrowed her eyes. "And certainly not to be given at the behest of a man who wears a mask."

"It wouldn't be for _me_," he said airily. "It would be for _her_. I'm sure you can realize after talking to her that she already has enormous power. She can manipulate her mobile suit like a Newtype. Giving her the Voiture Lumiere would just give her the power to end this war that much faster," he smiled, "and get you back to work that much sooner."

Selene glanced down at the _Minerva_, and Rau held back his grin as the tendrils of doubt moved in.

—

**April 15th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

Auel Neider opened his eyes with a start and said, "Jesus tittyfucking Christ."

"That's a new one," a voice drifted down the infirmary, and Auel glanced over to find Sting Oakley floating by his bed with a smirk. "Didn't know Jesus was into that."

"What happened?" Auel grunted, and laid back down on his bed.

"The Abyss got trashed, the _Minerva_ got its ass kicked, and we hightailed it to Arnhelm Colony. You've been out for a couple days."

"And when do I get to get up?"

"Maybe a couple more, depends on what the doc says."

Auel groaned. "How did I lose the Abyss?"

"The Freedom ripped it apart with those DRAGOONs." Sting shrugged. "But at least you're alive. Once we get things patched up here, we're going to Terminal."

"We almost died," Auel whispered, and stared up painfully at the ceiling. "After all that...we almost failed."

Sting winced at the mention of his block word but let it go. "Yeah, well, we're still alive and nobody tailed us here. As long as we can get to Terminal we'll be okay, and there's no sense moping about it." He gestured toward the medical equipment in the case next to Auel's bed. "And if you disagree, we can take it up with Mr. Tranquilizer."

Auel glared. "You're a dick, Sting."

"It's in the job description," Sting said with a laugh.

—

There was no sea or anything remotely comparable to be found in the Arnhelm Colony. It was just row upon row of decaying apartments and commercial complexes, so Shinn, Stella, and Roxy could only wander the miserable streets in search of something to do. Anything would do—anything to soothe the sting of defeat.

Roxy swirled around a bottle of something Shinn declined to identify. "This place is sort of a shithole, huh."

"Being ignored will do that to you," Shinn explained with a shrug, and kept an eye on Stella as she danced over the cracked sidewalks. "Humanitarian groups overlook this place and the Alliance isn't interested. The refugees here are pretty much left to fend for themselves." He glanced up at the distinctive sky of the space colony, where the lights of the other side of the cylinder was faintly visible through the clouds. "I guess it's a better way to exist than the refugees had it before, but..."

They all fell silent at the sound of gunshots, and Shinn backed away with Roxy and Stella at his side in an instant. Bullets pounded against the far wall in a nearby alley, and a man in a ragged uniform staggered around the corner with fear in his eyes and pulsing around his presence.

"They're after me!" the man shrieked. "They're gonna—!"

He pitched forward and landed with a thud, blood pouring from a bullet hole in his back, and two soldiers in brown Earth Alliance servicecoats emerged from the alley with submachineguns in hand.

"Report in to HQ," one of them said with a grunt, "Prisoner E-0057 neutralized." The soldier glanced up at Shinn. "You. Move along."

Shinn glanced down one more time at the dead prisoner, then shot the soldier a glare and stalked away.

"What was that about?" Stella whispered.

"That," Shinn growled as his fists clenched, "was the other side of the Arnhelm Colony."

—

**Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

The sounds of a dockyard at work rang dull and muffled inside the observation deck where Meyrin and Abbey watched quietly. True to Jeremiah's word, Arnhelm's mechanical staff had gotten straight to work on the poor _Minerva_, and although the Tannhäuser could not be replaced, the repairs would be sufficient to protect the _Minerva_ long enough to get it to Terminal, where its full fitting-out could take place.

Meyrin glanced at Abbey. "ZAFT has changed," she said quietly, "hasn't it?"

Abbey leaned forward to peer down at the _Minerva_. "I'm sort of surprised we haven't had anyone jumping ship," she said. "You would think at least someone would want to."

"We're lucky," Meyrin replied with a sad smile. "We have a good crew."

Silence reigned between them both as they both gazed down at the warship below. Meyrin idly wondered what Lunamaria would have done if she were here. No way would she have stomached what ZAFT was doing now...but would she stand with them anyway? For the sake of their homeland and their people? Did those things matter to Lunamaria Hawke?

"Well," Abbey added, "what will we do if the Resistance decides to side with ZAFT? They're doing these things and they already attacked us." She paused. "Do you think Chiao Xu would sell us out?"

"No. As idealistic as he is, even he wouldn't do that. And if he tried, Copland wouldn't let him." She crossed her arms. "If it comes down to it, Copland will make the call, and he won't let the Resistance side with ZAFT. He'd sooner side with the Alliance against ZAFT."

"Does he hate Coordinators too?"

"No. He hates evil."

Abbey smirked. "What kind of politician is he?"

"An ex-politician."

Meyrin bitterly turned her thoughts towards the angry soldiers of ZAFT. They were supposed to be her compatriots, the genetically-enhanced superior humans that would lead mankind into a brighter future...but look where they were now.

—

Trojan Noiret had been most proud of his green and white Astray Green Frame, with its exotic custom beam axe thing that Emily still didn't quite understand, next to Rax's blue ZAKU Phantom. She didn't quite want to break it to them that their machines were probably sorely outdated, but if Trojan's boasting about his piloting prowess had any kernels of truth in it, perhaps he could make up for it. Or perhaps that had all been just showing off for a girl. If the emotions tinting Trojan's presence were any indication, that was something he had been up to as well.

Emily blinked in surprise as a strange feeling of pressure registered in the back of her mind. She turned towards a side corridor in the spaceport complex and drifted to a halt by one of the gantries. There was pressure in there—but, as she felt her heart drop, it had the telltale distortion of an Extended.

A door slid open and Emily swallowed hard—just long enough for a girl in a red and black flight suit to emerge, tossing a long lock of orange hair out of her face and greeting Emily with a bright and sunny smile.

"Hey, you're that Angel of Death girl!" she cried, and in a heartbeat she had grabbed Emily by the shoulders and pinned her against the railing. "Wow! I never thought I'd meet you here! You're like super famous, y'know?"

"Y-yeah," Emily started, "um, you are...?"

The girl stepped back and proudly put her hands on her hips. "I'm the Blood Knight of Outer Space, the one and only Lily Thevalley!"

Emily felt her heart sink. An Extended that liked her. After she already had Trojan decidedly taking a fancy to her. Just what she needed.

"This is awesome!" Lily squealed. "I totally didn't think _anyone_ famous was gonna come by here! We're, like, always getting forgotten and stuff, y'know? So it's boring and they make me fly those boring patrols but then you guys showed up and I got to meet the freakin' Angel of Death!"

"Um, thanks, I think," Emily started, and hoped she wouldn't inadvertently stumble upon Lily's block word.

"Y'know you look a lot prettier than on TV!" Lily went on with a beaming grin.

"I-I do?"

"Totally! They make you look all dirty and gross, like you don't take baths or something! And they make you look mean and scary, but you're totally not!" Lily's eyes lit up excitedly. "Hey, wanna go get some coffee or something?"

Emily blinked. "Aren't you a little young to be drinking coffee?"

"Nobody's too young to drink coffee! Come on!"

And with that, Lily seized Emily by the wrist and dragged her off into Arnhelm.

—

**April 16th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

Intolerable.

Sitting in a side chair on the bridge of the _Lucifer_, third ship of the _Archangel_ class, his pressed black Phantom Pain uniform still warm on his skin, Colonel Joaquin watched with disdain as the ship slowly navigated the Debris Belt and inched closer to Lagrange Point 1 and the Arnhelm Colony. It was simply intolerable.

He had been the second in command of the Phantom Pain under Colonel Roanoke. The 81st Autonomous had been a force to be feared, and while Colonel Roanoke was off chasing the _Minerva_ and toying with his pet Extended, it had been Lieutenant Colonel Joaquin who had carried out the quiet missions that had paved the way for the Alliance's ascendancy. Joaquin's men had sabotaged ZAFT defenses at the Battle of Cyprus to take back the Dhekelia base; Joaquin's men had gone ahead of the main Alliance force during the invasion of South America; Joaquin had led the attack that had crushed ZAFT's staging ground in the Falkland Islands; Joaquin had all but won the war for them.

And what had Joaquin gotten for his troubles? A promotion to full Colonel—and that was it. He was bypassed for promotion by that miserable fool Markav, and a parade of toadies passed him by to the higher posts of the Phantom Pain that should have been his. Colonel Roanoke and Commander Lee had died at Solomon's Sword. He should have inherited the Phantom Pain.

Instead, here he sat on the _Lucifer_'s bridge, bound for the Arnhelm Colony to reinforce Colonel Whittington in what he felt was an imminent attack on Arnhelm's security forces. It was disgraceful.

Or, it would have been...had the _Minerva_ not docked there.

"Ortega," Joaquin said, and glanced at the olive-skinned man in the _Lucifer_'s captain's chair, "send out a line to Whittington on the _Tripoli_. Tell him the _Lucifer_ has arrived, and we are here to make something happen."

—

To be continued...


	7. Phase 07: Friends

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 07 - Friends

—

**April 16th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

"Well," Meyrin said with a start, "that's pretty cool."

Rotating and flickering on the _Minerva_'s auxiliary screen sat the schematics of a sleek mobile suit with the face of a Gundam, studded with verniers and two large thruster blocks on its back, with beam wings, a long rifle, and a segmented razor-edged whip on its left arm. By her side, Shinn and Athrun looked up at it in approval.

"Emily's lucking out," Athrun said. "I see they took seriously the combat data we sent them."

Meyrin shrugged. "Not that they had a choice one way or the other," she said. "But they don't have the nuclear engine or the core components to finish it. So we'll still have to get to Terminal first."

Shinn crossed his arms. "The Alliance has been poking around here, hasn't it," he started, and glanced up at Burt on the sensor console.

"I guess," Burt said with a shrug. "Arnhelm isn't sharing much, but I've heard rumors over the comm of an Alliance warship squadron that keeps passing close by."

"If they were going to attack, they would have done so already," Meyrin said thoughtfully. "Even after we got here. There may not be any enemies there."

Athrun glanced out the bridge windows, where the _Minerva_ was still missing its starboard Tristan cannon. "Let's hope so."

—

Emily steeled herself while brushing her teeth for the coming barrage as she felt Viveka saunter through the door of their bunk. _Here it comes..._

"So I hear someone's been hanging out with _boys_ all day," the red-haired woman crowed, and Emily sighed and focused on a molar.

"Yes, Viveka, I spent all day with _boys_," she said. "Are you jealous or something?"

"I dunno. Should I be?" cackled Viveka as she threw her arms around her sister. "So? Tell me."

Emily gave up this particular battle as a lost cause. "They're a couple of kids about my age and they pilot mobile suits for Arnhelm and the Resistance," she said. "One of them is named Trojan and he showed me his Green Frame."

"His _what?_"

"Mobile suit, you pervert." Emily paused to spit a mouthful of foamy toothpaste into the sink.

"Well excuse me for thinking that a guy named _Trojan_ showing you his '_Green Frame_' was a little suggestive," scoffed Viveka. Emily opened her mouth to ask what that was supposed to mean, but then her cheeks flashed red as the connection made itself for her.

"Viveka, I'm gonna kill you if you say that around him!"

"What, you're _interested_ in him?"

"N-No!" Emily sputtered. "I mean, he's cute, but he's kind of a dork." She paused to rinse and rolled her eyes at her sister's laughter. "Besides, the last thing I need in my life right now is a _boy_."

"Right," Viveka said with a grin, "'cuz none of them compare with the illustrious Shinn Asuka."

Emily ignored the bright blush on her cheeks. "Besides," she went on, "Trojan's not the only person I met here. I met someone else too, called Lily."

"Oh, so you swing both ways?" Viveka laughed.

"No!" Emily pursed her lips. "She's, like, thirteen or something. And I don't like girls that way!"

"Then what's so special about her?"

"She's an Extended."

They both fell silent for a moment as the implications filtered through Viveka's mind. "An Extended," she said. "You're sure?"

"Extended have a certain kind of pressure around them," Emily said quietly. "It's hard to explain but she's definitely an Extended. And, uh, she likes me. A lot. I think."

Viveka stared in the mirror at her sister's face. "So what are you going to do?"

Emily closed her eyes and thought for a moment. "We're leaving soon," she said, "so hopefully this will take care of itself."

She thought back to the last Extended she had met. Lily didn't seem to have a caretaker. Maybe she had broken free...or maybe she had found her caretaker after all.

—

"It's scotch that's almost half as old as you," Roxy explained with a smirk as she poured half a glass of the amber liquid out for Sting in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge. "The older it gets, the better it gets." She raised her glass in the air. "So. Welcome back."

Sting took a sip and immediately felt like someone had set his throat on fire. "I still don't know how you drink this stuff," he grunted between coughs.

"Lightweights, all of you."

Sitting back with his drink and fearing the next sip, Sting merely swirled it around in his glass. "Thanks for the drink, though, even if it is killing me."

"It's what I do," Roxy said with a shrug.

"So how come you're staying out of the colony?"

"I went with Shinn earlier." She glanced around conspiratorially. "It's not a good place to be. You know about Arnhelm, right?"

Sting steeled himself and took another sip. "Sort of."

"It's a refugee colony," Roxy explained, "but with a twist. Jeremiah is basically the military dictator here. He offers the refugees food, medicine, and shelter; the refugees keep their mouths shut and let him do as he pleases. It's why there's a Resistance base here. He gets supplies from Chiao Xu, and most of them go towards his private security force."

"So we're basically dealing with a small-time Lord Djibril," Sting groaned. "Wonderful."

"Yeah, but there wasn't anywhere closer. Not if we wanted to go to the Moon and risk passing by Arzachel or something."

Sting leaned back in his chair and stared ruefully at the ceiling. "What is it about this war that brings out the worst in human nature?"

Roxy smiled bitterly. "Oh, they always do that."

—

Drifting in the hangar in front of the silent Gaia Gundam, Matt Abes glanced tiredly between the Gundam and the pilot. Fortunately, Stella had fairly incontestable skills on the battlefield...because off it, she was sort of a loon.

"Everyone's counting on Stella," she whispered, staring into her Gundam's darkened eyes.

"That's right," Abes agreed, "so we've got to keep the Gaia in top condition. You remember how to recalibrate the OS?"

"Stella can do it," she mumbled, and moved down towards the cockpit hatch.

Abes scratched his head with a tired sigh. Shinn had given up long ago on trying to change this part of her existence and had instead accepted it as simply who Stella Loussier was, after the Alliance's intervention. It was a little sad. She always meant well and she carried out her tasks as best as she could, but she was almost impossible to communicate with, and only Shinn ever really seemed to understand exactly what she was getting at.

But of course Shinn and Stella understood each other so well. Stella had been what had driven Shinn to desert in the first place.

Abes pushed those thoughts from his mind. They never did any good. Look what they had done for Vino and Yolant, after all. The ghosts of a war that was already over were never worth entertaining.

Instead, he quite resolutely turned and headed towards the gantry. He would probably have to go yell at Arnhelm's mechanics again.

—

**April 17th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

Ivan Danilov sat uneasily in the _Charlemagne_'s captain's chair as he listened to Joaquin and Whittington argue over the comm. Three Phantom Pain field officers with five warships between them was really just a recipe for trouble...especially since one of them was the irascible Colonel Joaquin.

"First of all, Colonel Whittington," snarled Joaquin, "they won't _all_ be killed. Not if we broadcast the surrender warning. And if the refugees are too stupid to head for shelters they deserve to die. And second, a few thousand refugees is a small price to pay for destroying the Resistance and depriving ZAFT of an ally."

Whittington scowled on the screen. "I'm rather surprised that you aren't off fighting them yourself, colonel. Aren't they supposed to be our focus?"

"On the contrary," Joaquin said, with what Danilov thought was a downright evil grin, "intel suggests that the Resistance's leadership is in preliminary talks with ZAFT. Best destroy them now, while they're weak and disorganized, while we pick off the ZAFT units and prepare for the final thrust against Messiah. And that's why I'm here. If we have to destroy the Arnhelm Colony, then so be it. That's better than what ZAFT would do with it."

With a disgusted snort, Whittington cast a pleading look toward Danilov, but the _Charlemagne_'s captain could only squirm uneasily. Joaquin did have a point. The Resistance's space fleet was formidable but manageable, and ZAFT's apparent strategy was time-consuming to counter but likewise manageable. But what if they joined forces and worked in concert?

Well, not likely, according to the intel from L4. ZAFT units had attacked and heavily damaged the _Minerva_ at the DSSD's Troya Station. If the Resistance and ZAFT were mulling an alliance, that wasn't going to help...or else the _Minerva_ was bait, or about to go rogue.

"Colonel Joaquin," Danilov spoke up, "I still vote for exercising caution. We will accomplish nothing but inflict losses on ourselves by storming the colony now."

Joaquin arched an eyebrow in annoyance. "Odd that a man who commands a ship like that would vote for caution."

Danilov frowned. "All these guns don't make a difference," he answered, "if you don't know when to shoot them, and when to keep them quiet."

—

"It's going to kill that 'Angel of Death' bitch, you know."

Floating before the silent Nebula Blitz, Grey Saiba and Merau Seraux both turned in resignation towards the speaker, and found Travis Alterman drifting up from nowhere behind them with a devilish smirk on his face.

"Kind of pathetic that you two didn't get the job done," he went on with a shrug, "but you'll see. I won't even need the rest of you. There's no way she can handle the Mirage Colloid."

Merau raised her eyebrows. "You know she's a Newtype—"

"Horseshit," Travis spat. "Newtypes are just a bunch of crap that that faggot PLANT chairman came up with to scare people. You can blame that shit all you want for getting your asses kicked by a teenage girl, but it doesn't change the facts."

"She's not _just_ a teenage girl, Travis," warned Grey. "We would know. We've fought her before. You're underestimating her."

Travis turned his eyes towards Grey with a wild grin. "Really," he chuckled. "Well, I guess from _your_ point of view, she's good, but..." He laughed and headed down towards the silent Nebula Blitz. "'Angel of Death.' Hah. Can't escape my Nebula Blitz..."

—

**April 18th, CE 77 - Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

Lily put on a pensive look as she strode down the halls of the Arnhelm Colony port with Emily. "Well," she said, "I dunno, I've only been here for like a month or so..." She shrugged. "I think we were going to move on soon." But with that, she immediately latched onto Emily's arm. "But you're not gonna leave me behind, right?"

Emily winced. "Err, about that..."

"You wouldn't leave me!" Lily wailed. "It's boring and scary here! Everybody's mean and they make me go on those boring patrols and nobody wants to be my friend!"

"We're not really planning—I mean, we have passengers already—" Emily started, but Lily rooted herself to Emily's side. "Lily, really, I don't think you can come with us."

"That's not fair!" she cried. "Come on, Emily, we're friends, right?"

_Jeez, I just met you the other day,_ Emily thought testily as Lily dragged her down the corridor. "We're going to leave soon. The _Minerva_ is going to Terminal. Are you okay with that?"

"Yeah! I used to be on Terminal!"

Emily held back a groan. "Why do you want to come with me so badly anyway?"

Lily's face fell with sadness for a moment, and Emily instantly regretted it. "I'm lonely here," Lily said quietly. She perked up. "I'll help out! I got a mobile suit! Come on, I'll show you!"

"Lily, wait a minute," Emily sputtered, as Lily dragged her down towards one of the side passages.

"It's kinda old, but you can't judge everything by its age, y'know?" Lily went on, with a beaming grin. "Come on, slowpoke! It's awesome!"

—

"So," Rax said, just loud enough to be heard above the din of a mobile suit hangar at work, "what do you think of her?"

Leaning against the head of Rax's blue ZAKU Phantom, Trojan looked away awkwardly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I saw the way you've been looking at her, man," Rax said with a grunt. "Don't try to deny it."

Trojan frowned and tried to ignore the feeling of his reddening face. "Well, so what if I was? Are you jealous or somethin'?"

"Trojan, man, I am the exact opposite of jealous." Rax got to his feet and fixed Trojan with a look that brooked no disagreement. "I know you can't really help stuff like this, but seriously. The _Minerva_'s leaving soon. You're probably not gonna see her again."

"I know."

"And even if they weren't, or if you went along or something," Rax went on with a shrug, "well, this is a bad time to go thinking about things like that." He put a hand on Trojan's shoulder. "Seriously. I dunno how many times I've seen it. Two people who make their living by fighting fall in love, and it's only a matter of time before one of 'em dies and the whole thing ends in heartbreak. It's not worth it. Not in this way of life."

Trojan glared. "How would you know?"

"While you were in East Asia training with that Barry Ho guy, I was up here," Rax answered, "watching it all happen. Over and over again."

"And you think if I go after her, she's gonna die?"

"She might," Rax said, "but the one I'd worry about is you."

"Not fuckin' likely, man," Trojan said with a snort, and turned up his nose.

"Yeah," Rax muttered, "the others said that too."

—

The office was silent for a moment as Lawson and Jeremiah stared down through the windows at the grim tableau of the Arnhelm Colony—its murky sky, the crumbling buildings, the gray and desolate landscape. Jeremiah ran a finger up and down his metal cane. He had built this colony up from nothing, filled it with seven million refugees...and now that was all going to change.

"You're sure they couldn't change the meeting time?" he asked suddenly, and glanced at Lawson. The hawk-nosed man could only shrug.

"You know how ZAFT is these days, admiral," he answered. "Practically think they run the Earth Sphere now."

Jeremiah scowled. "Then why do they even want to meet with us?"

"I'm not sure," Lawson said, "but I have a theory on that. Perhaps they want to use the Resistance as a distraction to cover their own operations. It's not as though the Alliance would pass up opportunities to finish off Resistance forces in space or on Earth."

For a moment the only sound was Jeremiah tapping his cane tiredly against the floor. "In either case," he said, "the Alliance would attack us. As allies of ZAFT or just potential allies of ZAFT."

"A no-win situation for us."

"Well," Jeremiah replied, "to an extent." He waved a hand over the colony. "The Resistance was destroyed on Earth. It won't last long in space. Even with ZAFT around, the Alliance will not be long in finding and destroying Terminal and depriving ZAFT of a potential ally in the Earth Sphere. Our supply lines from Chiao Xu are about to be cut, most likely. So," he glanced up at Lawson, "we'd best hear them out, shouldn't we?"

Lawson smiled thinly. "And on that note, the _Avicenna_ is due to arrive tomorrow."

Jeremiah sat back. When the smoke cleared, after all, it would pay to be on the winner's side.

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, Lagrange Point 4**

With arms of fire stretching out from the colony's hull and ripping pieces of it off into space, the Gagarin City space colony shuddered under the unstoppable fire of the _Fortuna_. On the darkened bridge, Lyle watched from the captain's chair as the colony writhed as though in pain. One of the mirrors had been blown off, and that was throwing off the colony's rotation. One more shot would pierce through and sever the axial shaft—and once that was broken, the colony would begin to collapse.

Lyle glanced over his shoulder, towards the bridge doors. The Marshal rarely watched these actions for himself. Lyle and the rest of the crew knew why—because his heart was sick at the slaughter.

But that was just like the Vice Marshal of ZAFT. Kira Yamato was a good man, a saintly man, far better than even the Coordinators who exacted their just and proper revenge and brought balance to the scales of justice as they swept the Earth Sphere up in terror. He had sympathy for even these vermin Natural, sympathy they did not deserve. He had steeled himself to do what the Coordinator nation required, but his heart was too kindly to feel nothing at the sight of it.

The colony rumbled as a Tristan salvo blew off another mirror. Gagarin City's hull was riddled with holes from missile and Isolde shell impacts. Lyle narrowed his eyes.

"Tannhäuser, lock onto the target and..._fire!_"

The _Fortuna_ sent forth a shimmering column of positron energy that plowed through the colony's openings. Gagarin City began to crumble as the axial shaft snapped in two—and Lyle sat back and watched with satisfaction as the rotating colony began to break apart.

_The Vice Marshal may have sympathy for you parasites,_ he thought with a smirk, _but I sure don't._

—

They were dying. There were six million people in that colony and they were all dying.

Sitting at his desk in the bowels of the _Fortuna_, Kira clutched his head with his mismatched hands and struggled to keep his sanity above the rolling waves of horror. Six million lives were vanishing from the vast plane of human consciousness. Six million lives, at his order. They were dying, in a cloud of fear and confusion and regret. They were dying and they had done nothing wrong. They were dying and it was his fault—

He shook his head and groaned in pain. He thought of Valentine. It was necessary. The world needed shock and horror and mountains of corpses, like it had never seen before. The world needed to be so crippled it could not mount another war even if it didn't learn its lesson from this one. The Coordinators needed to be made safe, so that they could evolve into a better society worthy of Fllay's death in case the Naturals did not.

The door slid open and Kayla blinked in surprise as she stepped into the room. "Sir, are you alright?" she asked and rushed to his side.

"It's fine," Kira growled, through clenched teeth. "It's okay. It's just..."

Kayla studied his haggard face for a moment. "Captain Markus has just finished the destruction of Gagarin City."

"I know," grunted Kira. "I know."

—

It wasn't supposed to be this way, thought Gary Talon as his VaROZ sped back home from the abortive battle at Gagarin City. A small colony militia and an equally small Alliance garrison had sallied forth to fend off the ZAFT forces, but against three VaROZ units and four DOM Troopers all by piloted by ZAFT's best, they had been nothing. And then the _Fortuna_ had meticulously blown the colony cylinder apart, and now the ship's mobile suits were speeding home and leaving behind the wreckage of a colony and six million corpses.

Gary shook his head. It was supposed to be for a cause. For justice. For something true and righteous. ZAFT was coming back to take justice for what Lord Djibril and his cronies had done with their Requiem cannon. They were coming to set things right.

But this was just like at Austral. ZAFT had done to Austral what Blue Cosmos had done to the Coordinators, and now it was ZAFT's entire strategy. He knew the necessity—that the Alliance's advantage of vast resources included its massive civilian population, and ZAFT would have to cripple that if they were to cripple the Alliance and secure the Coordinators' existence. What, then, was the problem? This was militarily sound. This was what they had brought upon the Coordinators. An eye for an eye.

Right?

—

**April 19th, CE 77 - Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

"Okay," Emily said with more nervousness in her voice than she wanted, "what is that?"

She floated on one of the observation decks of Arnhelm Colony's massive spaceport, with Trojan and Lily at her side. Together they all stared out into the space around the dock—where the lime-green hull of a _Laurasia_-class frigate could be seen pulling into the port.

"That's not one of ours," Trojan said thoughtfully, "and I don't recognize it as a Resistance ship." He glanced at Emily. "Do you?"

"Not at all."

Lily squeezed Emily's arm. "What's going on...?"

"This could get bad," Emily warned, and looked over apologetically at Trojan. "We were attacked by ZAFT forces before we came here. They're our enemy. If that ship notices us in the dock and decides to attack, there will be a battle here."

"And all the refugees would be in danger," Trojan murmured. "Oh, Jesus Christ...Emily, we've got to do something."

Emily looked back down at the port. The _Minerva_ had been moved to a different bay, out of sight from the bay where that _Laurasia_ ship seemed to be touching down...but that was no guarantee of anything. The _Minerva_ was still badly damaged and short four mobile suits. A fight here would wreck the spaceport and endanger the entire colony. Seven million lives suddenly pulsed around her, stronger than ever.

"Well," Emily said quietly, "I'd better get back to the _Minerva_." She tried to smile reassuringly at them both. "Don't go doing anything dumb."

As she took off down the hall, she turned her eyes back towards the _Laurasia_ frigate.

_Not yet..._

—

"The _Avicenna_ is probably a ZAFT vessel," Rau explained as he drifted into one of the side seats on the _Minerva_'s bridge. "If my recollection is accurate, it was one of the ships that went to Mars. The IFF code would confirm it."

"No mistake. It's definitely ZAFT," Burt said from the sensor console. "Captain, what will we do?"

Meyrin settled into the captain's chair. "I don't even know what they're here for." She glanced up at Rau, and the masked man took the hint.

"My first guess is that ZAFT is meeting with Jeremiah, probably to discuss terms for an alliance of some sort. I doubt Chiao Xu would reach an agreement with ZAFT that did not guarantee our safety, but ZAFT may be looking to pick off individual Resistance leaders and bypass Chiao Xu. The Earth-side Resistance has been shattered, so if ZAFT can splinter the space-side Resistance, then Chiao Xu is irrelevant."

"If that's the case, then we need to get out of here," Abbey said.

"If that's what they're up to," Rau answered with a shrug. "It seems likely, since they only sent the _Avicenna_. If they were here to pick a fight, they would have sent more ships."

"But if they had Jeremiah on their side..." Meyrin sat up. "Recall our crew back to the _Minerva_, and be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

—

**ZAFT **_**Laurasia**_**-class frigate **_**Avicenna**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

Vermin Naturals, everywhere.

Captain Amos dusted off his ZAFT Black-Shirt uniform compulsively and straightened up. The Naturals in charge of this colony were due aboard his ship any moment, and he had his orders straight from Marshal Sunogachi. Win the allegiance of enough Resistance leaders and the Resistance would be neutralized as a threat—and then they could be disposed of at ZAFT's leisure. Amos would certainly look forward to _that_ part.

Amos glanced out the bridge windows. Marko Jeremiah had every reason to accept ZAFT's offer. If he didn't, it would be child's play for the _Avicenna_—even the _Avicenna_, a lowly frigate of the obsolete _Laurasia_-class—to blow the colony apart. Amos almost hoped that Jeremiah would in fact be that stupid.

Naturals. What did they need Naturals for? The Resistance was full of them, and look where those inferior creatures had gotten themselves now. Lord Djibril had crushed them on Earth. Were the ones in space supposed to be any better? It would be like the ZMA all over again.

He shook his head. Then again, the ZMA had always been meant to fight the Martian Civil War in ZAFT's stead, and it had been their incompetence that forced seasoned Coordinators to risk their lives on the battlefield. Here, if Marshal Sunogachi's plan went as intended, these Resistance creatures would just be meat shields as ZAFT did its work, and they would be dispatched in due time.

The bridge doors hissed open and Amos forced himself to salute the hard-bitten old admiral and his hawk-nosed adjutant in that damnable Earth Alliance uniform. "Welcome aboard the _Avicenna_, Admiral Jeremiah. We have much to discuss."

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Nelson**_**-class battleship **_**Tripoli**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

"No doubt about it, colonel," said Jackson, the _Tripoli_'s dependable captain. "ZAFT IFF code checks out. It's not Resistance."

Whittington's countenance darkened as he considered the implications. "Command said this could happen. ZAFT has been sending out feelers to other Resistance units and places like this, and intel suggests that Chiao Xu is in negotiations with Sunogachi." He stroked his chin thoughtfully. "No chance they're on a humanitarian mission?"

Jackson snorted. "'Humanitarian' is the _last_ word I would use to describe ZAFT lately, sir."

"True." Whittington studied the image on the screen before him. The _Laurasia_ frigate was backed into the port, its bridge facing out into space. One good salvo to the ship's prow would turn it into nothing more than a giant smoldering obstacle for whatever Resistance forces were inside colony. And the _Minerva_ had showed up here too. Technically, once the _Minerva_ had showed up here he already had probable cause to launch an attack, and now that a ZAFT unit was here duty practically demanded it. All Phantom Pain and Alliance Space Force units were to destroy any ZAFT units they encountered on sight.

But there were still seven million refugees in there.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

Colonel Joaquin's exultant laughter filled the bridge of the _Lucifer_, and the harsh old man whirled around in triumph towards Ortega.

"No more dawdling!" he cackled. "Ortega, get our mobile suits ready for immediate sortie. Contact the _Tripoli_ and _Charlemagne_ and inform them that we're moving in."

Ortega shifted awkwardly. "Colonel, shouldn't we confer with them first—?"

"Danilov and Whittington are too soft-hearted for this sort of thing," Joaquin snarled. "We have the _Minerva_ still licking its wounds and we have a ZAFT unit there now. We've wasted too much time observing and waiting. The time to act has come."

The bridge doors slid open and all eyes turned towards another figure stepping into the room. Only a black, round mask with a single green eye in its center stared back from the man in a customized black, blue, and white Alliance flight suit.

Joaquin grinned in recognition. "There you are, ND. I trust you overheard?"

The masked man straightened up and saluted. "Of course, sir."

"The Raigo will perform well, I'm sure, and the Hyperion Gs will be necessary to storm the colony and make a breakthrough. Take the Sumbullet equipment." Joaquin turned back towards the bridge windows, where the Arnhelm Colony spun lazily in the distance. "Just because ZAFT is back doesn't mean the people should go welcoming the Resistance. Make an example of them, you hear me?"

ND HE did not miss a beat. "Yes sir."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

As the bridge went dark and slid down into its combat position, Meyrin did her best to ignore the growing headache. First this ZAFT ship appeared, now the Alliance was on its way. "Burt, enemy count."

"Judging by the heat signatures, we're looking at the _Charlemagne_, a _Nelson_-class, two _Drake_-class, and an _Archangel_-class," Burt answered. "They're all launching mobile suits."

Meyrin glanced over at Abbey. "And Arnhelm's security force?"

"About a hundred mobile suits, three _Drake_-class destroyers, a _Laurasia_-class frigate, and a _Nelson_-class battleship. All pre-refit."

"Well, shit," Roxy put in. "Whaddya say we hightail it out of here?"

"No," Meyrin said firmly, "we're obligated to help, and we would have to fight our way through anyway. Roxy, have our pilots gotten a hold of some mobile suits yet?"

Roxy frowned at her display. "Yeah, but only from another Resistance outfit that was docked here. They're not gonna make up for the Gundams."

"They don't have to. Go to Condition Red. Malik, get the engines warmed up. Chen, get whatever weapons we have functional ready for combat. Burt, keep an eye on the _Avicenna_. Hopefully that captain has enough sense not to go taking shots at us with the Alliance breathing down all our necks, but they might be idiots." She scanned the tableau of Arnhelm's spaceport and the drifting wreckage outside. _The things we have to do to get to Terminal..._

—

Emily strapped herself into the Twilight Gundam's cockpit and closed her visor as the _Minerva_ shook and the catapult fired. Athrun's Infinite Justice Gundam rocketed out into space, without its Fatum flight pack—but it was a mobile suit, it could still function, and it would have to do. Emily glanced up at the auxiliary screen.

"Shinn, what's going on? Where are the others?"

"They borrowed mobile suits from Arnhelm," Shinn said. "But those are just mass production models. They're not gonna be able to keep up with us, so it's mainly you and me who will have to take care of all the really nasty stuff. Got it?" Emily nodded. "Alright. Shinn Asuka, going out!"

With a burst of exhaust, the Destiny Gundam rushed out of the ship, and Emily took her place on the catapult next. She reached out for a moment with her senses, where the familiar presences were—there was Trojan, somewhere in the port, swirling with anxiousness and probably bringing his beloved Green Frame to life. And not too far away was the telltale distortion of Lily Thevalley, who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. She had been so anxious about seeing Emily in combat, and so proud of her own mobile suit...

"Emily, you're clear," Roxy said, and Emily turned her eyes back out the _Minerva_'s catapult.

"Twilight Gundam, _launching!_"

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

"Arnhelm Colony is sending out mobile suits," the sensor officer reported. "Our surrender message has been disregarded."

"I thought so," Danilov grunted, and picked up the intercom. "Captain Bayan, the Crusader is finally getting its chance to shine. Begin launching our mobile suits."

"Yes sir," Sven answered.

"And before you go," Danilov added, "tell your men to be careful. That colony has seven million refugees on it. Under no circumstances are you to damage the colony or attack civilians. Your targets are restricted solely to Resistance and ZAFT combat units. Understood?"

Sven arched an eyebrow dubiously. "Even if they retreat into the colony?"

"Especially if they retreat into the colony."

"That will make destroying them very difficult, and costly to our own forces." Sven frowned. "We will not target the refugees, but I can make no guarantees of their safety."

"I understand. Get going. Bridge, out."

Danilov pushed down the intercom and swallowed the growing lump in his throat. With Joaquin charging into the fray and Whittington and himself reluctantly following, all after the damaged _Minerva_, some Resistance stragglers, and an isolated and outgunned ZAFT unit, things were about to get ugly on the Arnhelm Colony.

"_Charlemagne_, all ahead, full!" Danilov barked. "Flush out the warships in the space dock with smoke missiles!"

—

_Danilov is too weak_, Sven thought bitterly as he closed his helmet visor. The _Charlemagne_ shook as its catapults fired and it sent a squad of Dark Windams hurtling into space. The Crusader's turn was coming soon, and then he would see what Yukiko's masterpiece could really do.

"Attention all units," he said, "on Captain Danilov's orders we are to limit damage to the colony as much as possible. Limit your targets to Resistance and ZAFT units."

On the auxiliary screen, Shams frowned. "What, even if they go inside?"

"Even if they go inside. We are to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible."

Mudie scowled in annoyance. "Making our job more difficult, is he...?"

"Those are his orders. See that they're done." Sven cut the line and sat back, as the first of those Luna Project machines went roaring out of the hangar.

_Off to kill more civilians, are you?_ taunted the child's voice.

_Not now,_ Sven shot back. _I am about to enter battle and you will get me killed._

He shoved down the child before it could open its mouth again and focused on the Crusader's sleek, minimalist cockpit and its smooth panoramic screen as he guided the Gundam onto the catapult. This Crusader Gundam had been built to destroy the Resistance's champions. It was more than a mobile suit—it was a symbol of the Phantom Pain's hopes to turn the tide of this damned war. And it was his.

He steeled himself as the catapult locked into place.

"Sven Cal Bayan, Crusader Gundam, _launching!_"

—

To be continued...


	8. Phase 08: The Crusader Gundam

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 08 - The Crusader Gundam

—

**April 19th, CE 77 - Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

"Enemy count has hit forty-eight mobile suits and rising!" a voice cried out through the Twilight's cockpit. Emily closed her helmet's visor with a sigh. Arnhelm Colony had a little more than a hundred mobile suits, total. Perhaps that ZAFT warship would launch mobile suits too, or perhaps it would just plain flee.

She glanced to her right in surprise as a bright red and black mobile suit fell into formation next to her, and Lily's beaming face promptly appeared on her auxiliary screen. "I _told_ you it would be cool!"

Emily looked over the red machine, a Strike Gundam unit with the Aile Striker on its back, the Launcher Striker weapons pod on its right shoulder, and the Sword Striker's shoulder pack and anchor on its left arm. This, she had said, was the machine that had given her the nickname "Blood Knight." And, as she'd put it, it was going to "totally rock the house."

"Are you sure you can keep up with that thing?" Emily started, and Lily promptly put on a pout.

"Hey! I'm the ace, remember?"

The Strike Gundam Kai rocketed ahead and Emily merely shook her head.

_Just don't make me protect you out there or something..._

—

Sven Cal Bayan scanned the battlefield as the Crusader sped into action. Arnhelm's defense forces were just small change; the real prize—

He glanced off to the side, where he saw the wings of light flicker to life, and threw a switch on the Crusader's console. "Shams, Mudie, I've located the Destiny. Back me up—but do not interfere."

"Wha—how the hell are we supposed to do that?" Shams started, but the Crusader rocketed forward. "Sven! Come back here, dammit!" The Vanguard and Artemis Gundams took off with a flash after the roaring Crusader. "Jesus, what's gotten into him?"

Mudie frowned. "Thinking he's so powerful, huh...?"

Up ahead, inside the Crusader with his hands clenched around the controls, Sven narrowed his eyes at his rapidly-approaching foe. He thought again about his two hapless wing mates, and opened the line again. Best to keep them away, so they couldn't screw anything up—and so he could see for himself what the Crusader could truly do.

"Shams, Mudie, continue on without me and attack the Arnhelm mobile suits themselves." His face twisted into a scowl. "Nowhere to run now, Destiny..."

—

The base Infinite Justice rumbled as its engines carried it out of the colony and into battle. Athrun glanced around the cockpit; the Justice lost much of its weaponry without the Fatum-01 unit, but it still had its rifle, shield, sabers, and beam blades—and without the heavy Fatum unit, at least it had more agility.

"Viveka, how is it?" he asked.

To his right, inside a Blaze ZAKU Warrior, Viveka shifted uncomfortably in the cockpit. "It'll do, I guess," she said with an airy sigh, "but it's not the same as my Savior."

"Of course not. So don't push your luck." Athrun glanced next at the Murasame on his left, in its sleek flight mode—with Rau Le Creuset in the cockpit. He could just deal with it himself. "Viveka, you hang back and provide fire support. The ZAKU just won't be able to keep—"

He fell silent as a familiar white bolt of energy sliced through the air before him. That feeling—he knew that feeling—but how? That ZAFT ship was nowhere nearby—where—?

"Athrun," Rau said quietly, "do you feel that?"

"Y-Yeah," Athrun answered, "but how? Is that—"

"Not quite. It feels like Kira, but there's a distortion." Rau pursed his lips. "That thing is a clone of some sort."

"A...clone of Kira?"

"A clone of that guy who kicked our asses?" Viveka groaned. "Are you serious?"

Rau nodded. "The Alliance had a program during the Valentine War where they would capture and brainwash Coordinators to do their fighting for them. They abandoned it after the Coordinators kept coming to their senses, but I suppose not all of them have been eliminated."

Silence reigned between them for a moment, before Viveka spoke up again. "Kinda hypocritical of them."

"Lord Djibril is nothing if not hypocritical."

Athrun ground his teeth. "Incoming—_scatter!_"

The three mobile suits darted apart and Athrun opened fire with his beam rifle as a squad of Slaughter Windams came roaring in, rifles blazing—with a dark green and black mobile suit in the lead. It sent out a shining column of beam energy from the long cannon on the left-hand side of its back, forcing the three mobile suits to dodge—and plowing straight through a quartet of Arnhelm mobile suits coming up from behind.

"The hell is _that_ thing?" Viveka exclaimed.

"Raigo," grunted Rau, and the Murasame let loose a missile barrage that drove back the Windams behind a sheet of CIWS fire. "East Asia's prototype mobile suit. A next-generation Strike unit."

Athrun felt anger ripple through his veins. "A clone of Kira piloting a clone of the Strike. How ironic."

"Isn't it, though?" chuckled Rau, and the three mobile suits dove back into battle.

—

Stella Loussier let out her breath as the Gaia squeezed off another blast from its sniper rifle and drilled it straight through the cockpit of an approaching Windam. From her vantage point inside the port, kneeling behind her shield, she had a commanding view of the battlefield. And with Sting's Slash ZAKU Warrior and Auel's Buster Dagger by her side, she didn't have too much to worry about.

Other than them, of course.

"Stella, another squad!" Sting shouted. Stella whipped up the rifle and passed the sight over the squad of white and blue Windams on their way in. One of them lined up its Doppelhorn Striker's cannons and fired, pounding shells into the spaceport; a pulsing beam blast from Auel's Buster Dagger burned it away. The remaining three Windams, all toting bazookas, turned their fire on the space where the Gaia had crouched; but a moment later, Sting's ZAKU darted into their path to shower them with beam Gatling fire.

"Stella, now!" Auel shouted, and with a thundering blast Stella picked off a second Windam with her rifle. The remaining two darted down into the port and opened fire with their bazookas—just in time for two Dagger Ls and an M1 Astray from Arnhelm's forces to dart out of hiding and tear the two mobile suits apart with a volley of beam rifle fire.

"Those ships are in position!" Sting yelled, and the ZAKU lunged back into the port. "Everyone, take cover!"

Fire raced up around the spaceport and Stella grunted in surprise as a wave of missiles and beam fire from the Alliance warships far ahead slammed into the end of the colony. Auel and Sting backed away behind the Gaia, barely protected by its Phase Shift armor, and the three mobile suits moved farther back into the port.

"At this rate they're gonna breach the colony," hissed Auel. "Sting!"

"I know!" Sting shot back. "Let's go, Stella! Pull back!"

—

"Those ones are different," Emily muttered as the Twilight's cockpit zoom focused on three approaching mobile suits—all with the faces of Gundams.

"Emily!" another voice cried, and with a burst of exhaust the Gundam Astray Green Frame and Rax's blue Slash ZAKU Phantom dropped in next to the Twilight. Trojan's grinning face appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Don't think you can get yourself into the shit without us!"

Emily swallowed her fear. Up there were three mobile suits, but there were five human lives speeding towards her—so two of them must have had Mirage Colloid-equipped mobile suits. "You'd better be able to keep up with—" Her eyes went wide. "It's coming!"

The four mobile suits broke ranks and darted apart, and across the battlefield in the hulking Nix Providence Gundam, Kelly Maynard cracked a satisfied smirk.

"Merau, Travis, don't stay cloaked forever," she said. "And as for the rest—begin attack!"

The Nix Providence fired out its DRAGOONs and filled the sky with beam blasts, forcing the four mobile suits on the defensive. Emily leveled off her beam rifle to return fire—but a moment later a shell slammed into the Twilight's face and sent her hurtling back, and with a crash, the Regen Duel Gundam was there with its beam saber lit to slash the Twilight's rifle in two.

"Don't think you're going to have it easy this time, Angel of Death!" Grey cried.

The Green Frame darted down with two beam sabers extending off the barrel of its customized rifle and swung them both at the Regen Duel, driving it back. "Hands off, jackass!" Trojan screamed. "Emily—!"

"Them again!" Emily growled, and with a flash the Twilight activated its beam wings, drew a saber, and charged back into the fray. "Trojan, Rax, Lily, stay back—"

She threw her saber up to defend and the Twilight shuddered as two huge, serrated swords slammed down into the saber blade. Emily looked up in surprise, into the glowering face of the Gale Strike Gundam.

"So we meet at last, Angel of Death!" Erin shouted in the cockpit, and with a shove the Strike sent the Twilight reeling back again. The blue and white mobile suit closed in for the kill—but a wave of rifle blasts from the Strike Kai stopped it short.

"Don't even think about it!" Lily started—

"_Lily, move!_" Emily screamed, and an instant later the Twilight rammed the Strike Kai aside and rattled as a blazing yellow beam pounded against the black mobile suit's beam shield.

"Where the hell did that come from?" yelled Rax, but Emily glanced up towards an empty patch of space up above—where the Hail Buster Gundam flickered into existence and let loose a salvo of missiles.

"I thought so!" Emily cried. "Mirage—" The Twilight rattled again as something clamped onto it—and in front of her appeared the crimson armor and burning blue eyes of the Nebula Blitz. "Another one?"

"Can't say I'm too impressed, bitch!" cackled Travis Alterman. "Now I've got you, and I'll never let you go!"

Emily scowled. "Never, huh?" With a blast of exhaust, the Twilight flipped backwards and swung the Blitz around. "Never can be a pretty long time! _Rax!_"

A scream broke through the air as Rax's ZAKU Phantom came down with its axe drawn. Travis growled in frustration, released the Twilight, and darted to safety as the ZAKU's axe came down. A moment later the Nix Providence dropped in with a crash to shoulder the Twilight aside and slam its saber down against the ZAKU's left-hand shield.

"Leave the other three to me!" Kelly barked. "They're small change! Focus on the Twilight!"

The four Alliance mobile suits rushed back in, and Emily steeled herself.

—

**ZAFT **_**Laurasia**_**-class frigate **_**Avicenna**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

Everything was shaking and his own heartbeat echoed through his ears as Amos threw himself into the _Avicenna_'s captain's chair. His ship had one ZAKU Phantom, four ZAKU Warriors, and one GINN Long Range Reconnaissance Type. There was no way he could fight Alliance forces like those outside with a complement like that.

"Captain, the port has been badly damaged," the helmsman said. "There's a warship hulk in our way. Our guns may not be able to break through it—and if we did, we'd be going straight into the battle."

Amos shifted uncomfortably. "Are there enemy units advancing on the port at the other end of the colony?"

"No sir," answered the sensor officer. "But we would have to blast open the bay doors to gain access. Jeremiah's men refuse to open it for anything." Amos stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"Our survival is more important," he said at last. "Helm, detach us from the docking arm and turn us around. All guns, prepare to fire on the docking bay doors. We will proceed through the colony interior, blast our way through the port at the other end, and escape through the colony's other spaceport."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Arnhelm Colony, Lagrange Point 1**

"You led them here!" Jeremiah roared from the auxiliary screen, and his outraged voice echoed through the _Minerva_'s bridge. "If you hadn't come here—"

"Admiral Jeremiah," Meyrin shot back as icily as she could, "we did not lead anybody here. There were obviously Alliance units waiting near enough to the colony to launch this attack as soon as the _Avicenna_ arrived." She narrowed her eyes in disgust. "Which you did decline to disclose to us."

Jeremiah scowled. "I don't need to tell you my business," he snapped. "We would have secured safety for the refugees inhabiting this colony if it weren't for you showing up and attracting Alliance attention."

"We will discuss this later," Meyrin growled, and immediately cut the line.

"Captain, what _about_ those refugees?" Abbey started. "Jeremiah does have a point. An agreement with ZAFT would have spared Arnhelm from what ZAFT is doing to other colonies."

"Like ZAFT would've honored an agreement like that," Roxy snorted from the comm console.

"And besides," Meyrin added, "it's not as though we had any other choice. Arnhelm was the nearest possible stop." She glanced up at Burt. "Enemy action?"

"They're targeting the sunward port, but the _Avicenna_ just blasted its way out of its berth, and it looks like it's going to enter the colony interior."

"Which means they'll see us as they pass through the outer port," Abbey finished. Meyrin pushed down the feeling of fear.

"And the enemy's movements?"

"The _Nelson_-class is heading around the colony towards the outer port. Looks like they're going to set up there and intercept anyone who tries to go out through the inside."

Meyrin glanced over at Chen. "What about our weapons?"

"Portside Tristan is operational."

"Then get it and our missile launchers and CIWS ready. When the _Nelson_-class arrives we'll ambush them from port. Aim for the bridge tower. Roxy, recall Stella, Sting, and Auel and tell them to run interference against the enemy's mobile suits on the outer side."

She glowered back up at the darkened auxiliary screen. _We put seven million refugees in danger just by coming here..._

—

"It pilots like Kira!" Athrun snarled, as beam rifle blasts pummeled his beam shield. The Blaze ZAKU let loose a salvo of missiles that rained down around the port, but the Sumbullet Raigo effortlessly ducked between them and let its remaining three Slaughter Windams pick them off with CIWS rounds.

Inside the Raigo, ND HE watched behind his cold black mask as the Infinite Justice, Blaze ZAKU Warrior, and Murasame inexorably inched back, deeper into the port and towards the colony exterior. He threw a switch on the console. "Sandra, go back and inform the _Lucifer_ to send out the Caliburn Striker. David, Gabby, support me as I change equipment." He turned towards the three enemy mobile suits. "And as for you..."

The ZAKU drew a beam tomahawk and charged in close, but one of the Slaughter Windams leapt into its path and battered it aside with its shield. ND darted to the side, dodging a beam salvo from the Murasame and the Justice, and leveled off his Agni Kai cannon to squeeze off a shimmering blast—and with a thundering explosion, one of the spaceport doors finally gave way and exploded, and a gush of air came bursting out.

Athrun ground his teeth in frustration. "They're trying to enter the spaceport?" He turned and showered beam fire on the Raigo and its two Windam wing mates—but the Raigo let loose a storm of missiles. The Justice opened fire with its CIWS, tearing them down, but a pall of smoke rose up in front of him.

"The hell are they doing?" Viveka screamed. "Athrun—_what the_—?"

With a blinding flash, the Raigo burst through the smoke and fired its Agni Kai again, and the crimson blast slammed straight into the Blaze ZAKU's shield. Viveka yelped in shock and the ZAKU's left arm and Blaze Wizard vanished in a pall of fire.

"_Viveka!_" Athrun screamed—the seed burst and the Justice lunged up into the Raigo's face to rip the Agni Kai in two with a beam blade kick. The dark green Gundam backed away, eyes flashing, and pounded an artillery shell into the Justice's face. Rau's Murasame leapt in to catch the maimed ZAKU as it staggered back. "Viveka, are you alright?"

"Y-yeah," she answered, her voice broken by static from her dying machine, "but I can't say the same for my ZAKU."

"Then get out of here and head for the _Minerva_," Rau instructed. "You can do no more good here."

The ZAKU jetted away, and the remaining Murasame and Justice pulled back behind it with a barrage of beam shots. Inside the Raigo, ND glanced over at his wing mates.

"David, Gabby, pursue them into the colony. I'm changing Strikers."

—

The metallic cargo corridors of the Arnhelm Colony spaceport rattled as a GINN emptied its machinegun clip into the oncoming trio of Windams, painted in the white and blue colors of the Space Force. Two of the Windams stopped short and opened fire with their beam rifles, while the third lunged in low over the floor and chopped the GINN in two with a beam saber hack—

An instant later, the Gaia Gundam was there to slash the Windam in two with a downward hack from its own saber. The surviving Windams backed away, beam rifles blazing; the Gaia took cover behind its shield as Stella switched back to her beam rifle. Behind her, a Strike Dagger and a GuAIZ R emerged with rifles and railguns firing, forcing the Windams down the hall back behind their shields. One of them squeezed off a shot that slammed through the Strike Dagger's cockpit, setting off a thundering explosion.

Stella threw the Gaia back through the flames and put it down on one knee, and yanked the sniper scope into position. In a heartbeat she had the sights over the cockpit of one of the Windams; in another she blew it apart with a single blast. But through the flashing flames she caught sight of another three Windams arriving, one of them with a hulking Doppelhorn Striker, and before she knew it the corridor was filled with artillery fire and the GuAIZ R on her right was blown to pieces.

"Stella, hold on!" Sting's voice shouted, and a moment later his ZAKU whirled into the fight from a side corridor and let loose a torrent of beam Gatling blasts, forcing the four Windams up ahead into defensive positions. Auel emerged from another side corridor, high energy cannon drawn.

"And take _this!_" The Buster Dagger fired off a pulsing yellow beam that slammed head-on into the Doppelhorn Windam down the corridor, and as it exploded, Sting and Auel drew back behind the Phase Shift-armored Gaia.

Beam shots followed them down the corridor as the three mobile suits made a hard right and headed for the main colony entrance. "Dammit," Sting grunted, "at this rate we won't make it into the cylinder without enemies following us."

"Meyrin picked a great fucking time to call us back, didn't she!" Auel snapped.

Stella whirled around with a shout and pounded two beam shots through a Windam emerging around the corner, and took off as it exploded.

—

Shinn Asuka fixed his eyes on the glimmering beam wings of his dark and sleek opponent. The Destiny Gundam tightened its grip on its sword. Up ahead, inside the Crusader, Sven took the instant to catch his breath and look over his enemy once more.

He had destroyed the solid shield, the beam rifle, and the long-range cannon, and the Destiny was pitted and scarred and scorched from probably more than a dozen near-misses with the beam rifle. Every move the Destiny made, he had matched perfectly. The Crusader was everything he had asked for and more.

The Crusader's "Schwert Gewehr Mk III" anti-ship sword glinted under the light of the beam wings. "You are no longer unstoppable, Destiny Gundam," Sven intoned. "Now you must fight me on equal grounds."

Shinn only smirked. "Not likely, Devil's Saber. You're still not a Newtype."

The Crusader charged in a flurry of afterimages; Shinn rocketed upward and brought up his sword to defend as the Crusader brought its own blade around in a ferocious horizontal swipe.

"Newtypes are only a fiction!" Sven roared. "And _you are only a man!_"

With a crash, the Crusader brought down its sword and slashed a deep, sparking scar along the Destiny's chest. Shinn swung back with a growl, knocking the Crusader aside, but it danced around with a disorienting tornado of afterimages and rocketed in again, and Shinn clenched his teeth as he battled to keep up with the rapid sword strokes.

"Hate to burst your bubble," Shinn grunted, "but what I've gone through for the past four years is as real as it gets!"

The Crusader slammed its sword down against the Destiny's Arondight, leaving the two mobile suits to glower at each other through the sparks, beam wings glittering in the darkness of space.

—

"Fast...!" Emily hissed, as the Regen Duel pounded the Twilight with railgun and bazooka shells. Through the smoke burst the Gale Strike, blades drawn, and knocked the Twilight back further with a crash. The Hail Buster followed it up with a gunlauncher blast, and then the Nebula Blitz followed up with a flurry of beam shots. "Such teamwork—!"

"Emily!" Trojan shouted, and with a crash the Green Frame dropped into the fray, beam blades shining to life. The four Alliance Gundams darted apart and showered the green mobile suit with CIWS fire, and Trojan ducked back behind his shield. "Dammit, they're good! Emily, pull back towards the colony!"

The Twilight shouldered the Green Frame aside as the Hail Buster fired off a pulsing impulse cannon blast. "They'll punch it open and kill everyone inside!" Emily yelled. "Just let me handle them!"

Blades flashing, the Gale Strike stormed forward with a scream from its pilot. "Don't underestimate me, Twilight!"

Emily hurled her Gundam aside and rocketed upward—but the Regen Duel was there to slam her back with another bazooka volley. She darted to the side, letting the Strike Kai dive into battle with its beam saber drawn and force the Duel back.

"These things aren't gonna stop me!" Lily screamed; the Strike Kai roared forward after the Regen Duel. Rax's ZAKU dropped in next with a ferocious axe slash—but a storm of beam fire forced them all back on the defensive and the Nix Providence leapt up into the fight.

"Keep on them," Kelly ordered, "and we'll finish the Twilight off in one blow!"

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Nelson**_**-class battleship **_**Tripoli**_

"Approaching Arnhelm's outer port in twenty minutes," the helmsman reported, and on the bridge of the _Tripoli_, Colonel Whittington sat back thoughtfully while Jackson handed out orders.

The battle had moved inside the colony. Alliance units that had already entered the spaceport had found no sign of the ZAFT ship; it must have fled to the colony's interior. Alliance units were already pursuing Resistance forces through the spaceport, and soon they would be inside the cylinder. After that happened, it was only a matter of time before someone damaged the axial shaft badly enough to destroy the entire colony.

Of course, the _Minerva_ was there as well, in the outer port, and if they tried to escape the _Tripoli_ and her twelve mobile suits would be there to stop them.

"The _Minerva_ should still have some heavy damage," Whittington said with a glance towards Jackson, "but don't let your guard down either way."

—

With a burst of fire and a screech of snapping metal, the inner hatch gave way and the Gaia Gundam rushed out of the access passage, with Auel's Buster Dagger and Sting's Blaze ZAKU right behind it. Stella put herself back between the hatch and the two mobile suits as they roared through the colony sky.

"Shit, if we get too close to the shaft we'll blow the whole colony apart," Sting grunted. "But too close to the walls and we'll put the civilians in danger—"

"Incoming!" Stella cried, and the three mobile suits darted apart to make way for a salvo of artillery shells. She turned her eyes towards the source—where an IWSP Dark Windam was streaking towards them, with four white and blue Windams of the Space Force in formation around it.

"_Why you!_" Auel screamed, and leveled off his cannon.

"No, not in here!" Sting yelled. "Close range!"

The four white Windams opened fire again, pounding a salvo of beams against the ZAKU and Gaia's shields. The Buster Dagger popped up behind them to let loose its missiles—

An instant later, the Dark Windam seized its chance to fling an anti-armor penetrator straight towards the Buster Dagger. Auel yanked the controls to the side, but the penetrator still slammed into the Dagger's shoulder. The pointed bomb went up in a thunderous explosion, and Auel screamed as his mobile suit lost its cannon, its head, and its entire right arm—and the maimed mobile suit went reeling away, spewing sparks and smoke. "_F-Fuckers!_"

"_Auel!_" Sting shouted. "You bastards!" The ZAKU let fly a torrent of beam Gatling blasts.

"Sting! Take care of Auel!" Stella shouted, and with a roar from its thrusters the Gaia lunged down towards the Dark Windam. The black Windam darted backward, letting the four white ones open fire—but Stella expertly weaved her way through their blasts and fired back to blow one of them out of the sky. "How dare you...!"

—

"Exciting," muttered Shams Coza, "isn't it?"

The Vanguard Gundam lined up its overhanging beam cannons and opened fire. Up ahead, from a squad of four mobile suits, a Dagger L and a GuAIZ went up in flames—but the 105 Dagger between them darted through and leveled off its beam carbine—

Instead of firing, the Artemis Gundam dropped down in front of it with a beam saber slash and tore it in two.

"Acting like he doesn't need us anymore, huh...?" Mudie said with a smirk.

An M1 Astray came down from behind the Vanguard; Shams cracked a grin as he whipped around and shot it down with the ram cannons embedded in the Vanguard's shield.

"Well, at least the Vanguard's running well," he said with a chuckle. "And I guess we'll see how well Sven gets along all on his lonesome."

"There's another squad up there," Mudie murmured. "Shall we?"

The two Gundams' eyes flashed as they took off towards the colony.

—

Athrun Zala ground his teeth in frustration as he backed into the colony cylinder, with Rau in front him, beam rifle blazing. Up ahead, one of the Dark Windams seized its chance and hurled an anti-armor penetrator down at Rau's Murasame. He ducked to the side and returned fire with his rifle, but the Windams darted apart—

And with a crash, one of the hatches burst open and the Caliburn Raigo Gundam rocketed into the fray.

"_Him_ again!' Athrun snarled.

ND HE threw a switch on the console. "David, Gabby, Sandra, deal with the Murasame. I'll handle the Gundam." The Raigo drew its Caladbolg saber with a flash, lighting up the long and pulsing beam saber blade, and charged.

Athrun drew both his sabers, slammed them together, and swung up to parry the Raigo's blow. The blue and white Gundam surged forward anyway to knock the Justice back. Athrun backpedaled—but the Raigo clamped down its anchor onto the Justice's right arm and yanked it closer, and lined up its saber for a killing stab—

"You think that'll stop me?" Athrun roared, and brought up the Justice's leg to sever the anchor's cord with his beam blade. The Raigo darted back and deflected the Justice's saber blow with practiced ease.

Up above, Rau Le Creuset grunted as the three Slaughter Windams pummeled his Murasame's shield, and he squinted through the flashing lights as they closed in for the kill.

—

The swords crashed together and Shinn Asuka ground his teeth as the Crusader Gundam matched him blow for blow. It whirled around him in a flurry of afterimages; Shinn darted up to leave behind his own and let the Crusader cut through them uselessly, but the Alliance Gundam rocketed up after him and let loose a blazing red blast from its Agni Kai cannon.

"Not bad," Shinn muttered, as the Crusader came back down again with a thundering overhead sword blow.

The Crusader slammed its blade against the Destiny's Arondight and sent the Gundam staggering back. It came down with a crash and forced the blade down—just far enough for the Crusader to rear back for the kill—

"Not yet!" Shinn screamed, and the Destiny rocketed forward to shoulder the Crusader off course. Sven scowled and rammed his mobile suit's knee up into the Destiny's torso—and with another thundering crash, brought down the Crusader's other leg to knock the Destiny back, and followed it up with an Agni Kai blast that nearly took off the Destiny's right arm.

"I understand now," Sven growled. "You only beat us before because your machine was so much better than ours." The Crusader hefted its sword and charged. "_Now the field is level!_"

Shinn cracked a smirk even as the Crusader rattled the Destiny with another sweeping sword blow. "Getting a little presumptive there, buddy?"

—

"Emily, get some distance already!" Trojan cried, as the Twilight exchanged vicious sword blows with the Gale Strike. "They want you at close range!"

Rax's ZAKU Phantom flung itself into the fray with a scream from its pilot and a sweeping axe blow, and the Gale Strike backed away. The Regen Duel dropped down from above with a crash and kicked the ZAKU out of the way, and then darted aside—just in time for the Hail Buster to land a crushing gunlauncher blast in the Twilight's face. Emily grunted as she was slammed back into the cockpit seat—and an instant later the Nebula Blitz blasted out of the smoke, claws extended.

"_What does it mean when the Angel of Death is afraid?_" cackled Travis as he descended on the reeling Twilight—

"Don't even try!" Lily screamed, and with a crash the Strike Kai's Panzer Eisen anchor clamped down onto the Nebula Blitz's head—and with a yank a shout from its pilot, the crimson Blitz unit went reeling to the side. "Emily!"

Emily snapped her eyes up towards the Nix Providence, bearing down on her with its beam saber lit. The DRAGOONs darted through the space around them, pounding the Twilight with relentless beam blasts, and she grunted in pain, thrown back into the seat again, as the Providence pummeled her beam shield with a merciless downward hack.

"Erin! An opening!" Kelly cried; the Gale Strike rocketed up from behind the Twilight, swords extended for a killing stab—

"_No you don't!_"

Emily shot a stunned glance towards her left as Rax's ZAKU rammed her aside with its shoulder—and a wave of horror washed over her as she watched the Gale Strike's sword plunge through the ZAKU's cockpit, and the flickering life inside vanished in a burst of fire.

"_RAX!_"

The world shuddered as the Green Frame came down with a crash, beam sabers blazing off the end of its rifle, and slammed the Gale Strike away from the ZAKU's wreckage. Inside, Trojan fixed his smoldering eyes on the blue and white mobile suit.

"You goddamn bastard! I'll kill you for that!"

Inside the Gale Strike, Erin glanced up in frustration at the Green Frame. "Grey, cover me!"

The Regen Duel rocketed into the fray with a flash of exhaust and pounded a bazooka shell into the Green Frame, blowing off its left arm. Trojan charged forward with a scream and swiped at the two mobile suits regardless.

"Trojan! Stop it!" Emily cried, and cut herself short as she threw up her saber to deflect the Nebula Blitz's saber. "Lily, stop him before he gets killed!"

The Strike Kai roared down into the fight with a storm of beam rifle blasts, and Emily turned her eyes back towards the three mobile suits before her.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"What the hell are you doing, Joaquin?" Danilov roared on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge. "What are you moving forward for?"

On the auxiliary screen, Joaquin arched an eyebrow in plain disgust. "We're moving in to support the mobile suit squadrons. The Lohengrins are charged and all we need to do is move into position."

"The Lohengrins will breach the colony," Danilov shot back. "You'll kill everyone in there."

"So be it."

"Joaquin!"

The line went dark, and Danilov glanced furiously around the bridge. "What the hell is he thinking? Even if he does break the colony apart, that's only going to help the enemy." He clenched his fists around the armrests of his chair. "Damn him..."

—

Fire flashed around the Infinite Justice as its bisected beam rifle exploded, and Athrun jammed back the controls to dodge the Caliburn Raigo's furious saber swipe. Athrun saw his chance and rushed forward, and with a crash he swept the beam blade on his carry shield through the Raigo's saber hilt. ND snapped his machine around and drew the "Schwert Gewehr Kai;" Athrun ducked back as the Caliburn swiped horizontally at the Justice.

"Rau, get back and get ready to launch signal flares," Athrun shouted—but he stopped in surprise as instead the two Dark Windams line up and open fire with their beam rifles. The blasts pounded against the Murasame's shield—but the third Windam lunged up behind the Murasame with its beam saber active, and with a shriek of broken metal it brought down the saber through the Murasame's body, ripping off its head, its right arm, and half of its backpack. Rau bit back a curse and reached for the smoking Murasame's beam saber—but the two Windams ahead opened fire again to blow off its left arm.

"You're on your own here, Athrun," Rau grunted, and hurled the Murasame out of the fight.

Athrun scowled and threw the Justice back, just as the Caliburn came down with another sword swipe—but inside the Raigo, ND shot a glance over his shoulder.

"Allen, get your team moving, _now!_"

From one of the clouds emerged the vast lime-green hull of a _Laurasia_-class frigate, and from the sides of the axial shaft four more mobile suits burst out into the fight. Athrun turned towards them, but the Caliburn Raigo was there to pummel it again with its anti-ship sword.

"The hell are those things—?" Athrun started.

A moment later, the four Hyperion G mobile suits darted up around the _Avicenna_ and let loose a wave of beam fire. The _Avicenna_ lurched back as a torrent of firepower ripped open its prow, and then with a thunderous explosion the _Avicenna_ vanished in the flames.

"Where the hell were those things hiding?" Athrun shouted, and the Raigo came down with another sword stroke.

—

"Stella, we're not going to make it!" Sting shouted as the beams came down around the ZAKU. Nearby, the Gaia whipped around to deflect a beam blast from the IWSP Dark Windam; instead, the remaining two white Windams lined up to open fire and pound blasts against the ZAKU's shield. Sting whirled around to fire back with his beam Gatlings, only for the Windams to force him back further. The IWSP Windam charged with both of its swords drawn and knocked the Gaia back, down into a crumbling street.

"Sting! Get back!" Stella yelled, and Sting jammed the ZAKU to the right—

Too late—the IWSP Windam swept down to slash the ZAKU's left arm off and then dart aside, to let the two white Windams blow off the ZAKU's Wizard pack and right leg. Sting yelped in surprise and jerked back as the two Windams charged forward, and with a shout he seized a grenade off the ZAKU's hip armor and hurled it forward. The two Windams lurched back, but the grenade exploded and hurled them both to the ground.

"Stella, I'm done here! You're on your own!" Sting shouted, and the ZAKU staggered into the air. Stella threw the Gaia in between the remaining Windam and the retreating ZAKU and slammed it back with a kick to its shield.

"You're not going anywhere!" she screamed, as the Windam closed in with its swords raised.

—

The Destiny slammed against an asteroid and Shinn let out a painful yell. Up ahead, the Crusader charged with its sword ready for a killing stab—

"Not fast enough!" Shinn shouted, and with a crash he backflipped over the asteroid, letting the Crusader plow straight through it—and with a scream, Shinn came streaking back down with his sword upraised—

Sven scowled, whipped his left arm up with a beam saber in its hand, and sliced off the Destiny's left arm at the elbow and left leg at the knee. As the Destiny dropped past, he yanked his sword free from the rock and sliced off its head and its right arm at the shoulder.

"What the—?" Shinn started, and he jerked the controls to the side just as the Crusader brought its sword around for a killing blow. Sven followed with a shout and poured fire from his Agni Kai cannon after the maimed, retreating Destiny. "I've still got the beam wings!"

"And nothing else," Sven added, and rocketed after the Destiny.

—

"He killed Rax!" Trojan screamed, and brought his rifle down with a crash onto the Gale Strike's blades. "_He killed Rax!_"

"Trojan, control yourself!" Emily screamed, even as the Nix Providence pummeled her Gundam with beam fire and the Nebula Blitz swept after her with its saber. "Lily, get him out of here!"

"He—I can't!" Lily sputtered. Emily risked a glance towards the Green Frame, just as the Gale Strike ducked underneath a saber blow and scored a vicious upward cut over the mobile suit's chest.

"_Forgetting someone?_" another voice screamed, and with a flash the Hail Buster's hyper impulse cannon let loose a pulsing yellow blast that burned away the Twilight's right leg. Emily threw her Gundam back—only for the Regen Duel to lance up from behind her and chop off the Twilight's left arm at the shoulder.

"Over there too—?" Emily started, and hurled the sparking Twilight away as the Nix Providence came down with a saber flash and a flurry of DRAGOON fire—and just in time for the Nebula Blitz to rip a smoldering gash across the Twilight's chest. "How—?"

"Underestimating us, are you?" Kelly cried. "Finish her off!"

The Gale Strike kicked away the unresponsive Green Frame and lunged up with its swords raised, and Erin came down with a victorious grin—

Instead, her blades landed against the saber of the Strike Kai, and Lily charged forward with a scream.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_

Joaquin narrowed his eyes on the _Lucifer_'s bridge as the crosshairs passed into position. Arnhelm Colony was an Island Three open type, and those mirrors made for easy targeting of the axial shaft. Break it apart and the whole colony would come undone—and that would be one less Resistance base in the Earth Sphere for the Alliance to worry about.

"Target is acquired," one of the bridge crew reported. "Launch window begins in forty seconds."

Ortega glanced over nervously at Joaquin. "Colonel, are you sure about this? The refugees will probably be killed even if they've made it to shelters and lifeboats by now."

A derisive snort was his answer as Joaquin leaned forward. "A few million refugees are a small price to pay to secure victory. And ZAFT would do far worse than what we are about to do."

Ortega glanced back at the bridge windows as the countdown reached zero. "Lohengrins, fire!"

The twin red beams lanced out at the colony, and Joaquin smiled.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Arnhelm Colony**

"The entire colony is breaking apart!" Abbey exclaimed, as the rumbling of Arnhelm's destruction rattled the _Minerva_. "Captain, we've got to get going!"

Meyrin ground her teeth and pushed her horror to the back of her mind. That could be dealt with later. "Malik, engines to full! Chen, target and destroy the _Nelson_-class the instant we've got a clear shot!"

The _Minerva_ lurched forward, out of the collapsing port, and Meyrin watched tensely as the portside Tristan turned—and with a flash of green light, it fired forward its first salvo and slammed it into the unsuspecting _Nelson_ ship's bridge tower, blowing it apart.

"They're disabled!" Meyrin shouted. "Neidhardt, _fire!_"

With a burst of exhaust, the _Minerva_'s missile tubes opened fire and slammed a volley of missiles into the _Nelson_-class, tearing apart its hull and finally destroying the ship in a hail of fire.

Meyrin glanced up at Roxy. "Where are our mobile suits?"

"On their way back...well, sort of. Some of them got destroyed, but the pilots are all returning."

"Tell them to hurry up. We have to escape while the colony breakup is still distracting the Phantom Pain."

—

Emily screamed in pain as seven million lives vanished all around her, and the wreckage began to sift by her Gundam. She threw the Twilight back as the Regen Duel came down with a saber slash, and then ducked to the side as the Gale Strike followed up with a sword blow.

"So many people are dying...!" she groaned, and hurled the Twilight down beneath a flying piece of colony hull.

The Strike Kai lunged up instead and charged, beam saber raised. "Don't touch her!" Lily screamed, and slammed down into the Gale Strike.

"Grey, now!" Erin shouted—

With a flash, the Regen Duel swept in from behind and slashed the Strike Kai's Aile Striker in two. The Strike Kai shuddered under a thundering explosion—just long enough for the Gale Strike to reduce its crimson foe to a torso with two sweeping downward sword swings that took off both its arms at the shoulders and both its legs at the knees. Grey lined up from the rear for a killing saber blow as Lily shrieked in terror—

"_I'm still here!_"

The Regen Duel rattled and Grey let out a yelp of shock as the Twilight rammed the Regen Duel aside, then fired a combat flare into the Gale Strike's face. An instant later, it seized the maimed Strike Kai and rocketed away through the drifting colony wreckage.

Emily forced down a wave of horror and nausea as she saw bodies in the colony debris and turned her attention forcefully towards the defeated mobile suit behind her. "Lily, we're going to find a safe place for you to ditch that mobile suit."

Lily's eyes went wide. "What—ditch my Strike Kai? Emily!"

"Don't argue with me," Emily said, fixing Lily with a look that brooked no disagreement. "We're going to find Trojan and get out of here. Alright?"

"A-Alright..."

Emily glanced around the wreckage and stretched out her senses.

_Don't you be dead, too..._

—

With his Infinite Justice pitted and scarred and the colony coming apart around him, Athrun Zala raced through the scattering wreckage away from that Raigo Gundam and its pilot and all the horrors that came with it. Rau and Viveka had made it back to the _Minerva_—now it was his turn.

He glanced up towards one of the many widening openings in the colony, where he found the maimed Destiny Gundam jetting to safety with the Gaia by its side. "Shinn, what the hell happened to you?"

Shinn's static-broken face appeared on the Justice's auxiliary screen. "That new Alliance unit with beam wings happened to me. Where are the others?"

"Back on the _Minerva_, but their mobile suits were trashed." Athrun glanced warily around the ruined colony. "How could this have happened...?"

"So many people..." Stella murmured.

Inside the sparking Destiny, Shinn forced aside all other thoughts and emotions. There would be time for that later.

—

Trojan Noiret cracked an eye open painfully as the sensors in his dying Green Frame came to life, and through the shattered cockpit he saw the Twilight take hold of his loyal mobile suit's customized rifle—and, he noticed with a grimace, it was lacking quite a few appendages.

"Trojan," he heard Emily's voice say, "are you alright? We're picking you up."

Trojan blinked. "'We?'"

"Lily's in here. Come on. You're going to have to ditch the Green Frame; I can't carry it back with me." The Twilight's cockpit hatch swung open.

"I...I can't do that," Trojan started. "I have to take the Green back, and get it fixed, for Rax." He felt the hatred bubble up inside him again. "Those bastards killed him. I can't..."

"I'm not leaving you out here," Emily said. "Now come on. We don't have time to argue."

"But Rax—"

"You're going to die out here if I just leave now," Emily snapped. "I think that's happened to enough people. Get out of that mobile suit and come with me."

Trojan looked up miserably from his Green Frame's broken cockpit and saw Emily drifting above him, hand outstretched. The battered Twilight hovered behind her. He thought for a moment of Rax, how he had told him to stay away from Emily, that it would just end in tragedy.

So much, he thought bitterly, for that. He took Emily's hand, and she pulled him up into the Twilight's cockpit.

"Hey," Trojan said quietly as the hatch swung shut, with himself on one side of the cockpit and Lily on the other side, "I know this is silly, but...well, if my Green Frame's gonna be ditched..." He shrugged. "Would you mind finishing him off for me?"

Emily blinked. "Why?"

"It was a gift to me, from my old master. And...well, I'd hate to think Green would just become part of the Debris Belt or get captured by the Alliance or something."

After a moment's pause, Emily turned towards the dead Green Frame drifting in front of her. She leveled off the Green Frame's custom rifle, fired a blast into the cockpit, and backed away as the Green Frame vanished in a cloud of fire.

Trojan smiled sadly. "So long, Green." He turned towards Emily. "Thanks. I know that's kind of silly, but—"

Emily cut him off with a smile of her own. "I understand."

The Twilight's eyes flashed and the scorched Gundam took off with a roar.

—

To be continued...


	9. Phase 09: Terminal

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 09 - Terminal

—

**April 19th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

Ivan Danilov sadly watched the wreckage of the Arnhelm Colony drift apart. The _Tripoli_ had been destroyed as the _Minerva_ had made its escape; Joaquin's troops had destroyed the ZAFT warship and together the Alliance forces had laid waste to the Resistance fighters hiding here. But at such a cost...

This would all become part of the Debris Belt and by now there were probably no survivors. Another Alliance vessel was en route from the moon to handle anyone miraculously still alive and the grim task of corpse retrieval. As for the _Charlemagne_, it had its mission, and Danilov gave the ruins one last look as the mighty black warship turned its prow around. The _Minerva_ had slipped away into the wreckage, but Joaquin was on the scent and so was the _Charlemagne_'s sensor officer.

"Captain," Vera said suddenly, breaking Danilov from his thoughts, "if they're heading for Terminal, we're probably going to need reinforcements."

"If they lead us to Terminal, Command will probably send in a whole fleet to drop the hammer on them," Danilov answered with a shrug. "Just because ZAFT is here doesn't mean Headquarters will pass up a chance to smash the Resistance's stronghold in space."

He sat back as the _Charlemagne_'s engines rumbled to life.

_Of course, if ZAFT doesn't get to them first..._

—

The first thing that reached Sven Cal Bayan outside the locker room as he left the mechanics to tend to his victorious Crusader was an exultant Yukiko, flinging herself through the door and throwing her arms around his neck.

"I told you the Crusader would bring you victory!" she cackled. Sven pushed her off with a grunt.

"I will give you credit for building an impressive mobile suit," he said as he turned towards the lockers, "but the Destiny has not been destroyed yet."

"You'll do it," Yukiko said, and Sven felt something uneasy wash over him as he looked into her eyes. "You'll kill it. You have to. My Crusader is the better mobile suit. It can't be beaten." She grabbed his shoulders. "You're fighting for more than yourself, you know. You're fighting for everyone now. Like my sister."

Sven arched an eyebrow. "What about her?"

"The Destiny killed her, you know. She was a mobile suit pilot. The Destiny killed her in battle over Poland." She grinned wildly. "And you're going to take revenge for her, aren't you?"

"I will do as my duty requires," Sven said, and pushed past her towards his locker.

He scowled as he rounded a corner and headed for his own locker, and watched as Yukiko left with an eager grin towards the hangar.

—

"So," Grey Saiba said quietly on the _Charlemagne_'s observation deck, "that was victory."

He stared into the darkness of space, with Merau by his side, and knew that it wasn't really victory. The Twilight—well, most of it, anyway—had escaped. But it had escaped in defeat, and that was important.

Or...it was supposed to be.

"I was expecting it to feel a little better than this," he said. "Like we had accomplished something."

Merau glanced inquisitively at him. "What makes you think we didn't?"

"Well, there's the fact that the colony broke apart and killed everyone inside."

"ZAFT would have done the same."

Grey glanced wearily over his shoulder at the door as it hissed open, and Erin drifted onto the deck with a grin. "There you two are!" she said brightly. "Jeez, with the way you two are moping around you'd think we had actually lost."

"The colony was destroyed," Grey started.

"Then the refugees inside should have taken shelter," Erin said with a shrug. "Or better yet, they shouldn't have even let the Resistance forces be there in the first place. I'm sure most of them got to escape pods anyway." She grabbed Grey by the arm. "But you're forgetting what we accomplished. We had the Twilight on the ropes. If not for the colony breakup we might have destroyed it outright."

Grey thought back to his enemy's face and felt the hatred churn inside him, for that one moment in Volgograd that he still could not forget.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, Lagrange Point 1**

As the _Lucifer _hummed with its engines lit and its course set, Colonel Joaquin stood with crossed arms inside a room with a tangle of equipment strewn across the floor and walls, all leading to a maintenance pod in the room's center. Strapped down to the bed lay the youthful and serene face of ND HE—the face that he never saw, hidden behind that heavy helmet that kept him fed with the psychoactive drugs that ensured his mental stability.

This one was different from the Extended. Joaquin recalled the Combat Coordinators and the unpleasant tendency they had of breaking free of their conditioning. Even a few Extended had managed to do that, although physical dependency was a much more effective leash. But not this one.

"Colonel," the lieutenant in charge of the technicians said quietly, "we have him stable so far, but, well, there's only so much we can do. The implanted DNA..."

"I understand," Joaquin cut him off with a brusque wave. The process of creating this carbon human had not been perfect. Old DNA conflicted with new. Implanted information did not settle easily. A human's identity was not an easy thing to erase and overwrite.

No, ND HE was something new. That Coordinator that had piloted the Strike for the Alliance six years ago had been courteous enough to leave behind his genetic material, retrieved and spirited away at JOSH-A when the _Archangel_ arrived. ND HE had been six years in the making, and he had performed acceptably in battle at the Arnhelm Colony.

But in the Phantom Pain, acceptable was unacceptable.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, en route to Terminal**

Trojan Noiret drifted through the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck, lost in the stars. He idly and bitterly thought back to his departed Green Frame. Right now he would be working on it, squeezing another ounce of performance out of it...but what would that have mattered? As he thought back to the battle, he knew his Green wouldn't have stood a chance anyway.

That was, really, the worst thought of all: that he would have been powerless no matter what to save Rax.

He glanced up in surprise as the door slid open and watched Emily and Lily drift into the room. "So _that's_ where you've been sulking!" Lily exclaimed. Emily nudged her in the ribs and drifted closer to Trojan.

"Are you alright? You haven't come out of here since we landed."

"Yeah," Trojan said with a heavy sigh, "it's just...well, I dunno, I'm sure you've felt this way before."

Emily glanced at Lily awkwardly. She could mention Kyali or Aza or Isaac or her mother...but why bother when he was already depressed enough. "Definitely." She put a hand on his shoulder and tried to ignore the way he jumped in surprise. "Just don't stay in here forever. Nobody wants you to wallow."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Emily offered him a reassuring smile. "I know how you feel. We'll go if that's what you want." She glanced at Lily.

"Yeah," Trojan started quietly, "I think I need to be alone for a bit." He smiled back sadly—

Emily snapped her head towards Lily as she felt a bolt of terror race through the room, and Trojan fell silent. Lily drifted away from them, eyes wide and face drained of color; Emily swallowed hard as the fear radiated oppressively from the little Extended, and Lily brought her trembling hands up to her face.

"What the hell—?" Trojan started.

"This must be her block word." Emily moved closer. "Lily, are you alright?"

Lily landed softly against the wall. "A-Alone..."

"You're not," Emily said, and took Lily's hands. "You aren't alone."

"Alone," Lily whispered fearfully again, and looked up in terror towards Emily. "They'll...they'll leave me alone..."

"No one will leave you alone," Emily answered, and shook Lily by the shoulders. "You won't be."

"I-I won't?" Lily looked up into Emily's eyes, the tide of fear beginning to ebb away—and Emily winced as she remembered what was going on. Being alone must have been the traumatic part of her training that the Alliance had used to build a block word.

"I won't let you be," she said with a smile.

Lily sank back against the wall, the energy draining along with the fear, and Emily glanced wearily at Trojan. He shrugged apologetically.

"Sorry. Didn't know."

The fear still churned even as it began to fade, and Emily tried to push down her own.

—

As he looked over the damage, Shinn Asuka couldn't help but feel a little crushed that at long last, his loyal Destiny had finally had its figurative pound of flesh taken from it. The Alliance's beam wing-spouting Gundam had taken its head, its entire right arm, its left arm from the elbow, and its left leg from the knee. It was discouraging. Terminal would probably have the parts to repair it, but the Destiny had been made obsolete—and that thought was even worse.

At his side, Stella looked up in surprise at the maimed mobile suit. "It got trashed..."

"Yeah," Shinn said with a shrug, "it happens."

He turned his thoughts back to the battle, and the strange, pulsing presences he had felt. For a while, he could've sworn he had felt Kira Yamato on that battlefield...though Athrun had said it was only a clone. That wasn't a particularly comforting thought either.

"Well," Shinn continued, "Terminal said they can fix it." But Terminal didn't say they could upgrade it, put it on par with that Alliance Gundam. That meant it wasn't good enough, and that, roiling in the pit of his stomach, was the real thing to worry about. Not in a world like this. He had to be good enough.

—

The worst memory to come flooding back right now, mused Athrun Zala as he worked in the battered Infinite Justice's cockpit, was Kira standing on that rocky beach in Orb, after the battle against those three Alliance Gundams. They had finally settled their rivalry, finally returned to being friends and not enemies—before Jachin Due, before Rau, before everything went wrong. Athrun hated himself for that, for thinking that he and Kira could change the world. Only people with evil intent, it seemed, could change the world.

And then that clone's presence writhed and struggled in the base of his consciousness, like some kind of psychic parasite.

"So," Viveka said quietly, leaning against the Justice's head and peering down into the cockpit, "that was your friend, huh?"

"A clone of my friend," Athrun corrected. He idly considered the possibility of capturing it. Maybe he could bring back the Kira that Rau had destroyed, through that clone. But the _Minerva_ had enough unexpected passengers and if that strange warping to the clone's presence had been any indication, it was probably modified like an Extended anyway. "Though I guess it's not as bad as what the real one is doing."

Viveka frowned. "That's true."

"Just leave him to me in combat," he continued. "If that clone uses his fighting style, I know him well enough to counter it."

"Not like I have a choice," Viveka answered with a shrug.

Athrun turned his eyes down towards the console. That thing out there was not his friend, and that was what he needed to believe—no matter what his senses told him.

—

"So maybe we went a little too fast," Sting said tiredly, as he watched Auel change the bandages on his arm. Shrapnel from the Buster Dagger had added to that from the Abyss, and although none of it was life-threatening—yet—Auel nonetheless looked quite annoyed. He poked the tender flesh around one of the gashes on his arm.

"Shit, at this rate I'm gonna look like Viveka," he snorted, and set to work wrapping another bandage around his forearm. "Well, commiserate if you want, but I'm not going to sit on my ass all day on the ship. That's fucking _boring_."

"I know. Just don't push yourself too hard or you'll pop open like a water balloon."

"Nice." He picked at one of the cuts he'd already wrapped. "I guess we're gonna be at Terminal for a while, huh."

Sting shrugged. "Long enough to build us some new mobile suits and finish the repairs," he said. "And for you to heal."

"Oh, shove it up your ass. I'll be fine." He tightened his bandage, as if to punctuate the point. "You mean to tell me you came out of all that without a scratch?"

"No," Sting said, and glanced away awkwardly. "I just don't want to tempt fate."

—

"Terminal's mobile suit facilities will be more than adequate," Meyrin explained on the _Minerva_'s bridge, with the captain's chair turned. She glanced up towards the upper deck, where Selene stood nervously gazing out the bridge windows, and Rau sat behind her with a typically amused look on his face. "I can't make any promises beyond that."

"I understand, captain," Selene said, "but I'm just...having second thoughts, I guess."

"Now is the time to have them," Rau replied with a shrug.

"The _Star One_ has probably reached Terminal already, so you'll be reunited with your colleagues there," Meyrin added. "If you don't want to do this, you don't have to, but—"

Selene shook her head. "I can't rebuild the Stargazer if this war is going on. So if I can help end it..."

Meyrin arched an eyebrow doubtfully. "I understand, but one person can't end this war."

"No," Rau spoke up with a smirk, "but one person can make a great deal of difference." He turned to Selene. "For what it's worth, Ms. McGriff, I have absolutely no complaints about this. We will be needing increasingly high-performance mobile suits to make up for our lack of numbers." He glanced almost imperceptibly at Meyrin. "If the Voiture Lumiere can help our chances in that regard, then I consider it a good thing."

As Meyrin reluctantly turned back towards the bridge windows, Rau turned his thoughts towards the pulsing pressure down in the hangar.

_After all, our little Angel of Death needs a weapon befitting her power._

—

**April 20th, CE 77 - Hart Senate Office Building, Washington D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Senator Robert Meyers idly wondered whose idea it had been to create a post called "Grand Admiral" in the Atlantic Federation Navy. But as bad as it played politically, the man in his office certainly fit the part. Grand Admiral MacIntyre looked pretty grand, all things considered.

"I must say, admiral," Meyers began, and sat back in his chair, "it's rather odd for an officer of your stature to request a meeting like this. Less open-minded individuals might question your intentions."

"I have concerns that can't be taken elsewhere," MacIntyre answered with a neutral expression, "and am in search of a sympathetic ear."

"What makes you think mine is sympathetic?"

"That's what I'm here to find out."

Meyers sat back and regarded the aging admiral for a moment. "What is your concern, then?"

At that, the old admiral leaned forward with fire in his eyes. "Before I say anything, I'd like to know just what you think of Lord Djibril."

"Are my public statements not sufficient?"

"You're a politician, Senator. With all due respect, I know better than to trust what you say in public."

Meyers cracked a thin smile. "Fair enough." He leaned forward himself, resting his elbows on his desk. "I'm sure you understand how the game works, admiral."

MacIntyre did not flinch. "Perfectly, Senator."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

"So Sven," Shams started with as annoyed an air as he could manage, drifting with Mudie down the _Charlemagne_'s corridors after the silver-haired officer, "you wanna explain why you totally fucking ditched us the other day at Arnhelm?"

Sven glanced over his shoulder and said nothing.

"Do you not need us anymore?" Mudie asked with a strange little smirk. Sven came to a stop outside the doors to the hangar and straightened his uniform.

"I was running a combat test on the Crusader," he said at last. "It could tolerate no interference." And with that he ducked through the door and made his escape.

Shams heaved a sigh and glanced over at Mudie. "Bullshit?"

"Who cares if he doesn't need us," Mudie huffed, and headed back down the corridor, leaving Shams behind.

_I do_, he thought ruefully, _because the day he stops needing us is the day there's nothing left to keep him from killing us._

He looked down the corridor after Mudie as she rounded a corner and disappeared. This kind of relationship was the sort of thing they quietly warned recruits against in training, not because of discipline but because it would only lead to heartache—especially in as bloody a war as this one. Although Shams had his own theory about that warning, he had to admit that it did make a certain amount of sense on an intellectual level—if only he could shut off the other ones.

Sven was a broken man, and Shams felt sorry for him someplace in his being, but not so sorry that he would hesitate to shoot Sven in the back if he ever threatened Mudie or himself. He had spent so long in the Phantom Pain and could not say it was a rewarding experience, except for the friends he made—and except for her. And not even Sven Cal Bayan could take that away from him.

—

It danced effortlessly and flawlessly through his memories, that damned Twilight Gundam, and even though he and the rest of the mobile suit force that tentatively called itself the Maynard Team had decisively defeated it, Grey Saiba could not banish the Angel of Death from his memories. He almost wished he was an Extended, to have an excuse to erase those memories.

Erin found him in the observation deck, hunched over the railing and staring at the stars. "You hang out here a lot," she said, and he looked over at her with a start.

"It's quiet," he said with a shrug. "Peaceful."

Erin stepped forward with a shrug and came to a stop against the railing. "I don't know why you've been so withdrawn, though," she continued. "We beat the Twilight Gundam. The girl who's been haunting you the whole time. Just 'cuz she's not dead yet..." She smiled reassuringly. "Well, you can enjoy a victory, can't you?"

"That's not it," Grey said. He looked back in the vague direction of the Arnhelm Colony—where seven million people had died, according to the news reports, with only a couple hundred survivors. That had been the bitter, ironic cost of victory over the Angel of Death. "You know the colony broke apart and everyone inside was killed."

"I know. It's terrible."

"It's more than terrible." He turned towards Erin and began to lose hope that he would reach her. "What are we fighting for if we accept costs like that as just collateral damage? It was a Phantom Pain ship that fired on the colony, Erin. What are we fighting for?"

Erin sputtered in surprise for a moment. "Grey, what do you think we're fighting for? You know what the Resistance is like, and you've heard what ZAFT is doing. How could you possibly doubt us?"

"Because it wasn't the Resistance or ZAFT that destroyed that colony. And I know they told you otherwise, but it wasn't the Resistance that burned down Volgograd. It was us." He slumped back against the railing. "It was me."

Silence reigned in the air for a moment, and Erin left without a word.

—

They were different.

Kelly Maynard watched from the hangar gantry as far down below, Ensign Seraux spoke with the mechanics in front of her slumbering Hail Buster Gundam. Her team had performed well, meshing together in combat the way they had done in their drills and simulations, but it had been Grey and Merau who had performed best. They had experience, and they had something personal with that Angel of Death.

Kelly turned that thought over in her mind. After all, she had Travis and Erin for comparison, and although they had put up worthy fights of their own, the former had not quite lived up to all his pre-sortie boasting.

But then, neither of them had seemed very excited after the battle. In fact, Grey had seemed downright depressed—and after finally defeating the same pilot who had handed him so much shame, as well. That was something odd, something she would have to investigate. Erin would pry, of course, because Erin had her own reasons—but Kelly could not let the matter go if it could impact her team's performance.

After all, there were scary things out there, just waiting for her to slip up.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, en route to Terminal**

Shinn ground his teeth in frustration as he worked inside the ruined Destiny's cockpit, moving data and settings to a jump drive while he still had time. He had thought he was alone—but not quite.

"I didn't expect you, of all people," he muttered. "Not after what we went through."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Shinn had already convinced himself that the translucent, rippling image of Rey Za Burrel in front of him was just a sign of his psyche failing after too many years of constant battle and stress.

_Perhaps you need to see me,_ Rey answered.

Shinn looked up and straight through the vision, at the darkened screens of the Destiny's cockpit. "So is this some kind of revenge thing or what?"

_Revenge would serve no purpose now._ Rey crossed his arms over his ZAFT Red uniform, and Shinn felt a pang of regret as those memories came rushing back. Always in a rush, always uncontrollable.

"Then what do you want? If it's any consolation, it's not like I really wanted to have to kill you." He narrowed his eyes. "Although you _did_ kill Luna."

_The past is the past._

"If it weren't for that, neither of you would be ghosts."

_That is nonsense, Shinn._ Rey fixed him with that serious look he remembered so well from his days aboard this ship as a ZAFT soldier. _I was a clone born with the shortened telomeres of a forty-five-year-old man. By now I would have the DNA of a man nearing his seventies. I would be on death's door._ _You could not have stopped that._

Shinn felt a flicker of frustration ripple up his spine. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

_You're rather strange to be feeling so much remorse over killing your enemy._

"You weren't my enemy," Shinn said, and bowed his head sadly. "Or, you shouldn't have been. I don't know. It got all fucked up."

_The past is the past_. The incorporeal image leaned over the Destiny's cockpit console. _Which is why I am here. The past is the past. Take what you need from it to destroy Kira Yamato once and for all. I don't need to explain why._

Shinn turned his burning red eyes on Rey. "No, you don't."

—

"Frankly, Athrun, I'm surprised you were able to bring this damn thing back," Abes said with a sigh, "much less in pretty much one piece."

The two men looked up at the Infinite Justice Gundam, still missing its Fatum pack and badly scarred but otherwise whole and capable of combat. It and the Gaia were the only two mobile suits left that could fight.

"I won't be taken by surprise next time," Athrun said. "I just wasn't prepared for it to be piloted by..._that_."

Abes nodded. "We'll see what we can do at Terminal about replacing the Fatum, but I'm not making any promises. There's a lot of specialized parts in there."

"I know." Athrun looked back up at his Gundam's darkened eyes. "But the Justice is probably going to need to be replaced soon. It just can't keep up anymore." He narrowed his own eyes as the angry memories returned. "Not with the likes of _him_."

"Emily's the one who's got a new machine waiting there for her," Abes pointed out.

Athrun said nothing, staring into the Justice's eyes and seeing Kira again. The twisted clone the Alliance had used at Arnhelm, and the real one...the twisted monster that Rau Le Creuset had built.

Between the two, he couldn't decide which was worse.

—

"So," said Viveka with as imperious a look as she could manage, "_you're _the guy my sister's been hanging out with."

In the shadow of the Black Wolf of Normandy, Trojan Noiret floundered for words. "Um, hi, I'm Trojan—"

"Jeez, Viveka, don't be a jerk," Emily groused, and gave Trojan a nudge in the ribs. "She thinks you're coming on to me or something and she's playing the role of disapproving father."

Trojan looked down at the flexing metal arm and tried to ignore the first part of Emily's comment. "She pulls it off well."

"I try," Viveka said with a smirk. "So what's your story?"

"Err, I trained in East Asia with Barry Ho for two years and then I came here and—" Trojan started.

"Wait," Viveka interrupted, "you trained with _Barry Ho?_ The 'God of Fists' Barry Ho?"

"Yeah."

Viveka promptly clapped her natural hand down on Emily's shoulder. "Holy shit, Em, nice catch."

Immediately Emily's face flashed red. "Viveka! Don't you ever _stop?_"

"So what was Barry Ho like?" Viveka went on with an eager grin. "I hear he was a total badass."

Trojan awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "There, uh, isn't much to tell. We camped out for a while in the jungle. Did guerrilla stuff. Trained. There was that one time he took out a Dagger L with his bare hands, but—"

"Wait, he _what?_"

"Well, not really his bare hands, but he kicked out the camera plate and smashed the main camera, and then opened the cockpit and killed the pilot. So that's why some people called him 'Undefeated of the East' or whatever." Trojan shrugged. "Yeah, he was pretty badass."

"That is _so_ badass!" Viveka exclaimed. "Holy shit, kid, you're alright."

As Trojan launched into another story about his old master in East Asia, Emily glanced over her shoulder—where Lily was quietly waiting. She'd had nothing to say since yesterday, during that episode with her block word. "Are you alright, Lily?"

"Y-Yeah," Lily said, "but, um, I'm sorry—"

"It's alright," Emily answered. "We didn't know."

Lily settled into an awkward silence, and Emily turned back towards the conversation, pushing the unease from her mind. One Extended had been painful enough.

—

Nobody around here was happy.

Stella Loussier just didn't get it. She had sat down with her sandwich in the crew lounge, but since eating by herself was boring, she had gotten to thinking. And that had led her to realize that nobody on this ship was ever happy.

Well, there was Lily. She seemed to be happy. Emily had said that Lily was an Extended. She must have been like Sting and Auel, then, because they were always taking things so seriously and working so hard, and Lily seemed more like that. But Lily was nice, and happy. That was a nice change.

There weren't enough people on this ship who were happy. Shinn was sad. Was that because the Destiny had been destroyed? He said it could be replaced. The Gaia was okay, but Stella wondered how she would feel if it got trashed in a fight. They could probably fix it, or even make a new one for her, but the Gaia was her friend, sort of. They were a team.

Nobody on this ship was happy, and it was starting to make Stella frustrated. They had lost some battles, their mobile suits had been destroyed, and a lot of people were gone. But they were all still alive. They all still had each other. They even had new people, new friends.

Stella ate her sandwich and wondered why she was the only one who understood that.

—

**April 21st, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Another day, another port of call for the famous _Minerva_. As the boarding gantry locked into place, Meyrin idly searched the banks of her memory for recollections about the enigmatic Terminal. They had made some changes, at least; the docking brace into which the _Minerva_ was fitted was a new addition.

The airlock door swung open and on the other end, flanked by officers clad in a variety of uniforms from across the Cosmic Era, a man in the old style of an Orb flag officer's uniform coolly accepted Meyrin's salute. Rear Admiral Oshida ran a tight ship here; she had no worries about getting shot in the back.

"Looks like you needed a pit stop," Oshida said as he shook her hand. "Did anyone follow you?"

"Not that we know of," Meyrin said with a shrug, "but Alliance warships are known to use Mirage Colloid."

Oshida and his entourage led Meyrin and Abbey out through the gantry, and out the windows she glanced towards the distinctive tapering shape of the space fortress Terminal. ZAFT had started to build it during the Junius War as a secret supply base in the Debris Belt, not far from Lagrange Point 3. ZAFT had left before it was complete; the Resistance had finished the job. And now, after that disaster at Carpentaria and the destruction of locations like the Arnhelm Colony, it was one of the last strongholds the Resistance had to its name.

But the Alliance was coming, surely. Even with ZAFT launching its war on the Earth Sphere, surely the Alliance would not pass up the opportunity to destroy the elusive Terminal, where the Resistance's space fleet had gathered, in the densest and deadliest part of the Debris Belt.

In which case, Meyrin mused, they would have to work quickly.

—

"Fancy seeing you here, Shinn Asuka."

At the sound of an unfamiliar voice and the mention of his name in one of Terminal's sprawling mobile suit hangars, Shinn Asuka steeled himself for a fight and turned around—and came face to face with a woman in a ZAFT Red uniform and glasses, and a face that instantly rushed back from the misty valleys of memory.

"_Riika?_"

The memories were more pleasant with her, mostly because Shinn remembered having a crush on her when he was stationed at Armory 1. He had chalked that up to clingy flight suits doing all sorts of things to his hormone-addled imagination, but with three years on she still looked pretty much the same as he remembered. It was a little comforting to see that at least that hadn't changed.

Riika Sheder looked him over for a moment, arms crossed. "I suppose I should be shanking you or something, huh?" She settled for a shrug. "Water under the bridge, I guess. How have you been?"

"As good as I can be. How come you didn't go with ZAFT to Mars?"

The derisive laugh told Shinn everything he needed to know. "They were in a little too much of a hurry packing up materials and information to bother with the test pilots on Armory 1," she scoffed. "And when you look at what they're up to now, I think I was right to just stay here, lousy as it's been." She shrugged again and a sly grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I don't think I've made out quite as well as you, though, Mr. Hero of the Resistance. Sure didn't expect that from you when you first showed up on Armory 1."

Shinn fidgeted awkwardly with the cuffs of his jacket. "Neither did I." He was silent for a moment and looked back up at Riika, at the same woman he remembered as the friendly face among the test pilots on Armory 1. Where Mare had been abrasive and jealous and Courtney had been cold and distant, Riika had been the most welcoming person he had met on Armory 1, and the only one who had been at all supportive during his Herculean efforts to learn the Impulse's damned combining setup. To an intimidated boy fresh from the ZAFT Academy with a daunting task before him, that meant everything. He looked at her again. "I'm surprised you're not holding a grudge."

Riika only stared at him sadly. "These days," she said, "what would be the point?"

—

It was a few moments before he spoke, and neither Viveka nor Athrun appreciated the wait.

At last, Mikhail Coast turned around in the examination room and pushed his spent syringe into the waste unit. "The good news," he said, "is that it can be done. The stem cells are all there and the neural regeneration therapy should work, barring complications."

Viveka arched the eyebrow over her good eye. "And the bad news?"

"Six months to grow the arm and eye, and after the surgery to attach them you'll be unquestionably out of commission for another six at the very least, just for the healing and letting the nerves grow back. Therapy to acclimate you to both new parts would be probably another six to twelve months." Coast offered an apologetic shrug. "If you were a Coordinator, your regenerative capacity would be greater, but since you're not..."

"It's alright," Viveka said with a wave. "I can wait. Until after this damned war is over, so I've got two years to kill learning to use my body parts again."

"In the meantime," Coast continued, "I can implant a mechanical replacement for your lost eye. You'll have to spend several days recovering and the mechanical version is not ideal, but in your case there's not so much damage inside the socket that it can't be done."

Viveka glanced awkwardly at Athrun. "Can you guys afford to have me sleeping off a surgery for a week?"

"We _are_ in dock," Athrun answered, "but the Alliance could show up at any moment." He shrugged. "If you really want the mechanical eye, go for it. We can manage in the meantime."

"It's a daylong procedure," Coast warned, "but in the meantime—"

"I'll just wait for the cloned parts," Viveka interrupted. Coast blinked in surprise, but Viveka spoke up before he could interrupt. "I got all these injuries from battle. From fighting with the Resistance, against the Alliance. And that war isn't over, even though ZAFT is here. They don't slow me down in combat. So as long as this war is still going, I'm going to look like I'm still part of it."

Coast smiled thinly. "It's common for soldiers to make promises on their combat injuries."

At that, Athrun thought back bitterly to the last soldier he'd known who had made a promise on his scar. "Yes, it is."

—

Terminal had many interesting bits and pieces, and one of them was its ready-made escape ship, the technical flagship of the Resistance in space. And Rau Le Creuset drifted down the observation corridor, taking in the image before him.

It was the _Alexandria_, the blue-painted tenth warship of the _Eternal_ class, that they had buried in rock up to its bridge tower and sequestered in here as one of Terminal's many surprises for attackers. Few Alliance officers would expect that Terminal itself could crack open and vomit up a cruiser, and the _Alexandria_'s humming reactor in the meantime made for a handy auxiliary power source.

Rau indulged himself in a moment's reminiscence, enjoying the memories of his time as a ZAFT White-Shirt with the golden piping of Order of the Nebula honors and the shiny lapel pin of FAITH. He still possessed all those accoutrements, because someday they might come in handy—but here, in a ZAFT-built space fortress staring at the dramatic stern thruster arrays of a curved and elegant ZAFT warship, he felt as though he was back in that dashing, pristine uniform again.

But that was silly, in the end, because ZAFT had changed. Valentine and Kira had molded its remains into a tool for their own ends. If the _Avicenna_'s undignified end at Arnhelm had been any indication, they hadn't improved by _that_ great a stretch at Mars—but if the _Seraphim_'s performance had been any indication, they had improved by enough.

He had yet to find the hangar where Emily's new Gundam was being built. Selene had made a beeline for it, and Rau did not want to draw undue attention by doing something silly like asking about it. But he would find it yet—and see for himself just how powerful his growing angel would become.

—

"I can't believe you did that," Emily said, with an expression somewhere between accusatory and amused as she, Trojan, and Lily drifted down the bright corridors of Terminal.

"Hey, all these doors look the same on the outside," Trojan complained, his cheeks bright red. "How was I supposed to know it was the women's locker room?"

"At least we got to see Trojan's famous martial arts training!" Lily added cheerfully. "I thought she was gonna snap your neck!"

"This is why you knock first," Emily said with a smirk as they rounded a corner.

Together they came to a stop in one of the windowed corridors that looked out into the vast, choked Debris Belt. The space junk obscured the Moon and the Earth, but nestled within this great trash heap was one of the few places where Emily finally felt that she could catch her breath. It was a place of rest, and as the fatigue in her bones that she had not noticed until now attested, it was what she needed the most.

A mischievous look that Emily did not quite like flickered onto Lily's face. "I'm gonna go get something to eat," she said, and before either of them could say anything she took off back down the corridor.

Emily pursed her lips. _Way to be subtle, Lily._

"I'm sorry if I've been causing problems lately," Trojan started awkwardly. "I dunno. It's all been a lot of big changes for me."

"I understand."

Trojan frowned and stared down at the railing. "Usually it's Rax who keeps me from being too obnoxious, but, well, you know."

"You aren't being a problem. My sister just likes to tease people. Mostly me."

"I got the impression."

They both settled into an awkward silence. Emily already had her guesses as to the source of Trojan's nervousness, but that would probably just result in drama—and she had enough of that going on in her life. He was an alright guy, she supposed—nice to look at, at least—but she had not been kidding when she had told Viveka that the last thing she wanted to deal with right now was a boy.

That, after all, had not ended so well last time.

"It's funny," Trojan said quietly. "Everyone kept saying that you were just, like, my age or something. And you are. But you're...I dunno. Different. It's like you're older than me." He glanced awkwardly at her. "Y'know, the way you act, towards Lily. The way you rescued me at Arnhelm."

"I didn't want to just leave you," Emily answered—and as she picked up the quiet rush of emotions from the sad young pilot and turned her own words over in her mind, she nervously considered that maybe she had been wrong in what she'd said to Viveka. Because maybe she didn't have a choice.

Emily leaned forward on the railing and thought back to Isaac.

—

To be continued...


	10. Phase 10: A Moment's Rest

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 10 - A Moment's Rest

—

**April 22nd, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Someone had taken her "Angel of Death" moniker a little too far.

Emily hated to feel fear in the presence of a deactivated, incomplete mobile suit, but the sleek, thruster-laden monster standing in a hangar brace before her evoked nothing but apprehension. It had four points on its V-fin to the Twilight's two; it had a huge beam sword to replace the Twilight's bulky Arondight; it had removed the long-range cannon, strengthened the arms to withstand crushing pressures on the wrists, carried a pair of large binders on its backpack instead...and yet, despite its physical similarities with her trusty Twilight, she looked into this new machine's face and saw nothing but evil in those darkened eyes.

At her side, Selene looked over with a knowing smile. "Impressed?"

"That thing is _scary_," Emily whimpered.

"It's not supposed to be scaring _you_," Selene said with a grin. "But if you think it's bad now, just wait 'til I'm done with it."

"Why?"

Selene looked back up towards the Gundam, and Emily winced at the bolt of sadness that shot through her. "I'm going to add a variation of the Voiture Lumiere."

Emily blinked as she thought back to what little she knew of the key feature of Selene's beloved Stargazer. "How is that going to help me?"

"It won't be the same as on the Stargazer," Selene explained. "We used a laser satellite to simulate solar wind during testing. Some reconfigurations will make it work as a maneuvering system for the Gundam. With the beam wings active, you'll be able to achieve at least twice the speed you had with the Twilight—and the Twilight was pretty fast already."

The silent new Gundam stared down at Emily. "That's a lot of power."

Selene's smile disappeared. "It's the power of the Stargazer," she said. "The power that Sol and I built. I'm entrusting it to you, so that you can end this war." She smiled again, and this time there was no mistaking the sadness behind it. "You understand, right?"

Invigorated by the feeling of a cause, Emily nodded solemnly. This power to end the war...and, as she felt Trojan's dim presence somewhere in the fortress, a reason to end it.

—

"I will deal with it."

Inside one of Terminal's computer rooms, Shinn stared through the dim unnatural light at the hardened face of Athrun Zala, determination burning in his eyes. Shinn glanced back at the screen, strewn with schematics for the Fujiyama Company's Raigo Gundam. A clone of Kira Yamato had been piloting that thing, and it had boiled Athrun's blood ever since to think about it, marking his presence for those with the senses to know wherever he was on the fortress.

"I mean it, Shinn," Athrun went on. "I'll leave the real one to you, but this one..." He shook his head. "It's a temptation. To try to make things the way they used to be. But they'll never be that way, and the only way I'll be able to put that temptation to rest is to destroy that thing myself. Do you understand?"

Shinn shifted awkwardly. "Are you sure you just want to kill it?"

"It had the same distortion to its pressure that Stella has. You were able to save her because of a whole string of fortunate twists of fate. I can't count on that." A flicker of grief passed over Athrun's face. "And even if I did, it wouldn't matter. Not when this thing is only a clone, and the real Kira is out there..."

"If you say so," Shinn said. "Is this thing as good as the real one?"

"Sort of. But the Raigo has limitations, so I can deal with it." Athrun glanced back at the screen and glowered at the Raigo's menacing face. "I'll have to. One Kira being used by evil bastards has been bad enough."

Shinn frowned. "What about the real one?"

Athrun's presence flickered with emotion. "The real one," he said, "is dead. Because Kira Yamato would have never done the things this man has done. If I brought him back, he would always be both—and I couldn't live with that." He glanced up towards Shinn. "He's...beyond salvation, I guess."

"So you wouldn't mind if I killed him?"

"It would be for the best."

Even with that smoldering ember of hatred somewhere in his heart for Kira Yamato, even with all that had happened, even with the death-grip it had on his soul, that still sounded sad to Shinn Asuka.

—

Meyrin Hawke watched silently from an observation deck as the mechanics lowered the armored door down over the _Minerva_'s freshly-replaced Tannhäuser. The repairs were proceeding at a steady clip, and with shifts of workers laboring around the clock the warship would soon be back to normal.

The same could not be said for the mobile suits. They had been able to repair the Destiny, and the Gaia and Infinite Justice had not taken major damage in the first place. But the other four were beyond repair. They would have to borrow machines from Terminal.

At least, until the new ones were finished.

That was the real problem. The _Minerva_'s cadre of Gundams were obsolete. Terminal had spent the beginning of the year hacking together new designs in anticipation of that encroaching reality, but in the meantime there were limitations in resources. Terminal had enough materials to repair the _Minerva_ and the Destiny, and to build Emily's new machine, but not for the development of seven more new models.

Meyrin tried to put it in perspective. They only had to travel to the Moon to acquire the parts they needed. Then, with eight new units on the cutting edge of mobile suit technology, they would be finally able to do something—about the Alliance, about ZAFT, about this horrible mess of a war.

That powerlessness ate at her heart, as she watched ZAFT blow away civilian ships, as the Phantom Pain tore open space colonies, as the Resistance teetered on the edge of disintegration. It was like she was back in that seat that Roxy now occupied, holding up the earpiece and staring helplessly as people fought and died—as Shinn rushed headlong into battle and the most she could do to help was send him new Impulse parts when he asked. There had been something particularly miserable in having a job that mainly required her to watch and wait. It had only gotten worse when he deserted, and her helplessness was compounded by her inability, then, to understand why he had left.

Now she sat in the captain's chair, and perhaps Talia Gladys would have been pleased to see how she had commanded this warship. But it was because Talia Gladys wasn't here that Meyrin Hawke was.

She shook her head and returned her sights to the recuperating battleship. Meyrin was no longer the helpless little girl watching battles unfold. As bad as the _Minerva_'s situation was now, deprived of most of its mobile suits as the war escalated by the day, it was not hopeless.

—

"Yeah, they're not coming back," Vino Dupre said with as much of an air of finality as he could muster. "Say your goodbyes now, kids."

Drifting through one of Terminal's hangars, Sting and Auel looked down sadly as their ruined Gundams were torn apart by the technicians below, for their reactors, their N-Jammer Cancellers, and other important features. Auel heaved a sigh and looked away uncomfortably as the mechanics split open the Abyss's chest like a surgery patient.

"Well, they had a good run of it," Sting said with a sigh of resignation. "What are they doing with the cores?"

Vino pushed his tablet over to the two Extended. "Something you'll like."

Sting caught the tablet, turned his eyes down towards it, and blinked in disbelief. "Holy shit."

Spinning on the screen before him were the schematics to an entirely new mobile suit, similar in its appearance to the old Chaos—but with two wings on its back, missile launchers in its hip armor, and four gunbarrels instead of two. Sting nodded his approval.

"The bad news," Vino continued, "is that we can't build them here. We'll have to head to the Moon to pick up resources and parts, and probably stay there for a bit to use their technical facilities. Piecing together mobile suits out of prefab spare parts is one thing; manufacturing new machines with new parts is a different beast."

"So Emily just lucked out then," Auel scoffed.

"If you can call it that," added Sting. "'cuz guess who's gonna be our first line of defense until these new machines get built?"

"Well that just means more fun for her."

Sting glanced back down at the Chaos's remains. Of course it was all fun, until you ran into someone who was better. His poor Chaos understood that all too well.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

They didn't understand. They never understood. _He_ never understood.

Merau Seraux looked at the dim reflection of herself in the Hail Buster's dark cockpit screens and shook her head. After all that time she had spent telling Grey about the need to forget about what he was looking at, the last thing she needed was to go forgetting her own advice.

After all, if you let these things get to you, you'd wind up a broken, rotted husk. Every war had its name for that state. Every war exposed those who fought it to horrors they could not have comprehended before they donned the uniform. Why would this one be different?

It was all the more important for people who came from nice peaceful lives, and had nice peaceful lives to which they could return when the war was over. On the streets of war-torn Sofia, torn asunder amid ethnic strife and endemic poverty, there was no peace. And nobody had cared. Nobody had bent down to rescue her; she had just had to learn and fight and survive the hard lessons of war, and when she watched her best friend die, maimed by a handful of machinegun rounds and spurting blood from his shattered body, she had learned everything she needed to know. There was evil in this world and nobody could do anything about it. It could not be fought—it would just destroy you, as surely as Stefan had been destroyed trying to fight the forces of a totalitarian local government. It could not be exposed—no one would care if it was, as surely as no one cared about the death and drama on the streets of eastern Europe. It could not be controlled—not without becoming evil yourself.

She shook her head again. The only way to survive was not to think about causes and morals and just focus on survival and survival alone. Causes bred anguish, when they failed to be fulfilled—or when they _were_ fulfilled and turned out to be nothing like what their followers had expected. Morals bred pain, because life would always, always demand that they be violated.

That was the lesson of Sofia. That was the lesson of Karelia and Volgograd and Novorossiysk, where evil things had been done. That was the lesson of the Arnhelm Colony, where nobody could have stopped those colonists from dying.

And still nobody understood.

—

Sven Cal Bayan bristled as he stepped into the computer room and found Yukiko there, lounging in the chair with a vast assortment of mobile suit specs on the screen before him, and feeling annoyance shoot up his spine at her casual grin.

"I've been wondering when you'd show up, Captain Bayan," she said.

"I am not here to cater to your whims, Ms. Nakajima," Sven answered.

She ignored him and went back to the screen. "So I've been going over that battle at Arnhelm," she went on, "and I've found room for improvement." She gestured at the screen. "For all the high performance you pulled off, you didn't quite manage to destroy the Destiny, and I've figured out why. He's got you beat on reflexes." She arched an eyebrow knowingly. "Newtype stuff, I'm sure."

Sven felt his blood bubble. "Newtypes are a fiction," he started—

"Oh, don't give me that, dear," Yukiko laughed, and turned back towards the screen. "You know as well as I do that there's a strong case to be made for extrasensory powers of spatial awareness, telepathic communication, superhuman empathic awareness, and reflexes so fast they border on the precognitive. The 3rd Fleet's old Mobius Zero corps had those abilities, as I'm sure you'll recall."

"What are you getting at?" Sven asked.

"What I'm getting at," Yukiko said with a wolfish grin, "is that we can make you a Newtype."

The air went tense in the _Charlemagne_'s computer room as Sven stared at Yukiko, a mix of emotions swirling inside him. "That's impossible," he said at last. "Even assuming that Newtypes are real, no current hypothesis as to their characteristics allows for someone who is not a Newtype to be simply _turned into_ one." He almost shuddered as the next line of thought flooded his mind with implications, and with the corrosive knowledge of possibility. "The closest our technology has is an Extended, and you are _not_ going to turn me into an Extended."

"Don't you want to defeat the Destiny?" Yukiko asked with a smirk. "You know he has you beat on reflexes. He can see the future. Are you not willing to do whatever it takes to defeat him?"

"An Extended will not defeat him," Sven shot back. "Only a soldier undeterred by block words and conditioning can keep up with him. And I will not allow you to turn me into an Extended."

Yukiko waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, not like the usual ones, perhaps," she said, "but it's a possibility we've been studying at Althea. A mix of the biological CPUs and some other techniques—"

"_You will not turn me into an Extended,_" Sven snarled, and with that he turned on his heel and stomped out the door.

—

The tapping of keys was the only sound in the Nebula Blitz's cockpit, where Travis Alterman sat with the keyboard folded out. It was probably the only place on the ship where he had enough time alone—supposedly running diagnostics on the Nebula's OS—to actually get this done. His unnervingly dramatic new teammates had a nasty way of _intruding_.

In the meantime, Travis felt some measure of satisfaction in the circumspection of his report. Danilov had that sentimental streak to him and the rest of the crew seemed to be loyal to him—so that made Danilov the focus of his mission. There were doubts about that man. It was bad to have doubts, especially in a war like this, and especially about a man with a command like this. If he really wanted to, Danilov could do a great deal of damage if he were to do something untoward with this warship. But did he really want to? That was Travis's job to discover.

He shuffled his report onto a flash drive and quietly removed evidence from the log of his work. The mechanics probably wouldn't check the log to make sure that he had actually been doing diagnostic work in here, but chances were not to be taken. Not in this line of work.

He had hesitated at Volgograd. Travis knew all about that. Markav had been there on the bridge, ordering him to open fire, and he had hesitated. No Phantom Pain officer could do that. Especially not one like him. He had passed up opportunities to fight the _Minerva_ because of concerns about the impact on local civilians; he had never hatched a plot that preyed on the _Minerva_'s biggest weakness, its unflinching moral compass. Even at Arnhelm, at the battle Travis had seen with his own eyes, it had not been the _Charlemagne_ who had fired the lethal shot at Arnhelm that had secured victory; it had been the _Lucifer_. Travis remembered that, as would his superiors.

The _Charlemagne_. Now there was an irony. This ship was named after a man who had built an empire atop a mountain of corpses, and yet it was captained by a man too timid to do a tenth of what it had taken Charles the Great to forge the Carolingian Empire.

Timidity, at least, from a certain point of view.

—

"I'll admit," Shams said with a nod as he scanned over the combat footage, "you guys did pretty good."

It was the little things like this that made Kelly Maynard's day worthwhile, and she struggled to accept the compliment with poise and dignity. "I trained them until they were ready to scream. It's as to be expected."

She quietly regarded 1st Lieutenant Shams Coza and his inscrutable companion, 1st Lieutenant Mudie Holcroft. Their commander was off somewhere else, and he was a man far too tightly wound to be completely sane. These two...well, Shams was likable enough, if rather sarcastic and cynical. But Mudie...

Well. Kelly could remember the quiet sexism vividly from Volkov Crater—never overt, not even universal, but leering under the surface all the same in some of her instructors and fellow cadets. Mudie was from the first generation of Phantom Pain soldiers. Surely it had been even worse for her, without even the unifying cause of a famous and esteemed fighting corps to soothe the sting. That was back when they were the 81st Autonomous Mobile Corps, slinking around in the shadows doing Blue Cosmos' dirty work. What wonders _that_ did for one's sense of self-esteem.

And yet with Captain Bayan, they formed the "Devil's Sabers," one of the most successful mobile suit combat teams in the Alliance military. Their battles against the Destiny had been the basis from which she had developed the tactics that had helped take down the Twilight. It was supposed to be a moment when she met her heroes.

And yet, looking at Mudie's distant expression and Shams' forced smile, it was just sad.

—

**April 23rd, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, orbit of Earth**

"It's not the fact that he's a Coordinator that bothers me, sir," Ortega protested, as he and Joaquin both watched ND HE in another simulator exercise. "It's that he's a clone, of _that_ Coordinator."

Joaquin chuckled. "You just need to be more appreciative of irony," he said. "Like it or not, Kira Yamato was very effective as the Strike's pilot. And this carbon human process lets us have our _own_ Kira Yamato. So why not use it?"

"Because the original Kira Yamato wound up fighting against us," Ortega answered.

"Not a concern with ND. Not with all the Extended technology built into him. The drugs in his suit and mask need to replenished, by us, or else he'll start shutting down."

"Being an Extended didn't stop us from losing three of them in the Junius War," countered Ortega. "We lost Stella Loussier that way, and the two on the _Girty Lue_ wound up taking out one of the Destroy units at Daedalus."

Joaquin cast a frustrated glance at Ortega. "Would you rather we not use him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's too bad. Headquarters gave us our orders. And besides," he glanced back at the masked man with a smirk, "he has his uses."

—

**Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Emily steeled herself as she felt Lily round a corner up ahead and come barreling towards her. And so the mockery would commence.

"So, I never got to ask," Lily said with a devious smirk as she attached herself to Emily's arm, "how was your little moment with Trojan?"

"You're as subtle as a train wreck, Lily," Emily answered flatly, and took hold of one of the pull-bars.

"Well _someone_ had to do it!" Lily protested. "You two would look cute together and you know it."

"Gee, thanks." Emily came to a stop by the doors to one of Terminal's vast hangars and cast a tired glance at Lily. "Honestly, I admit he's cute, but _really_—"

Lily promptly pouted. "You know, you guys don't need to be totally depressed and stuff all the time," she shot back. "Live a little. What's wrong with that? Did you used to have a boyfriend or something?"

The door hissed open. "I'll tell you later," Emily said with a sigh, and pushed herself through.

Left behind, Lily darted through herself before the door closed. "That's what you say about _all_ your stories!"

Emily landed instead on one of the gantries. Of course, her stories lately seemed to have a depressing end, and she wasn't yet ready to tell Lily what had happened to Kyali—to one of her own—when she had tried to mount a daring rescue. Or what had happened to Aza, killed for want of luck. Or what had happened to Isaac, and what she had done to the man who killed him.

"Hey, what's that?" Lily asked, and pulled Emily to the side.

Across the hangar stood what looked at first glance like Viveka's late Savior Gundam—but this one had its wings mounted on its shoulders and a different head assembly. The markings on its body almost reminded her of those on the five Alliance mobile suits that had trashed her Twilight—and thinking of _them_ sent a flicker of annoyance up her spine.

"I thought they already took the Savior apart," Emily started.

"If they colored it in red I would totally take it," Lily added. "Not joking. I would go camp out in the cockpit until they give up and let me keep it."

Emily eyed the red-haired little girl for a moment and then grabbed her by the back of her collar. "Don't even think about it."

"Oh, come on, you were the one who made me leave the Strike Kai behind!" Lily wailed. "I have to have _something! _I'm the Blood Knight of Outer Space! You can't do this to me!"

Emily arched an eyebrow and found her opportunity to change the subject. "How did you get that nickname anyway?"

"Killin' people!"

"...that's not...never mind."

—

"We'll be counting on you," Rau said as he loomed over the Gaia's open cockpit. Stella sat inside, the Gaia's OS settings file open before her, looking determined. "Terminal is repairing the Destiny, but that's it. You, Athrun, Shinn, and Emily are our defenses until our new mobile suits are completed."

Stella pursed her lips. "What will you guys do?"

"Come down with cabin fever, I suppose," Rau said with a shrug.

"Don't get sick," Stella put in, and looked up earnestly at the masked man. "Stella doesn't like it when people get sick." She paused for a moment. "Would Rau get sick?"

"I'm a Coordinator, Stella, I won't—"

"'cuz Rau has the mask."

Rau processed that for a moment and tried not to bury his face in his hand. Never would he figure out why Shinn liked her so much. "It doesn't work that way, Stella." He shook his head. "As I was saying, you're going to have to keep the Gaia in peak condition. You will be one of our few lines of defense."

Stella smiled back. "Rau shouldn't worry."

He felt Emily's presence flickering somewhere inside Terminal, strong and bright. "No, I shouldn't."

—

It was good to know that not everyone in ZAFT hated him, Shinn Asuka reflected as he peered into the cockpit of Riika's dark blue ZAKU Phantom. She glanced up at him from the cockpit seat.

"Yeah, Mare was still in the hospital when they packed up Armory 1," she said with a sigh. "Some of us just slipped through the cracks. But he went with them to Mars, as far as I know. They _did_ say his gunshot wound was survivable."

Shinn frowned. "So that means he might well be running around the Earth Sphere slaughtering people."

"Yeah. He would, wouldn't he."

"So," Shinn went on awkwardly, "I saw Mikhail Coast here, and there's you. Anyone else I'd recognize?"

"Me."

He turned around at the sound of feet hitting the gantry and blinked in disbelief at the man standing before him. "_Courtney?_"

Courtney Hieronymus stared down Shinn with all the coldness he remembered from his days in ZAFT. "Riika was not the only test pilot to survive from Armory 1." His expression darkened. "Although we have certainly taken different paths since the raid..."

"Courtney, don't," Riika interrupted. "Shinn, maybe you should tell him about what you were doing."

"You accept his judgment?" Courtney asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Um...sort of, yeah, I guess."

Shinn looked back and forth between the two of them, not liking the storm of anger and confusion radiating from the taller pilot. "Then I'll take your word for it," Courtney said, and glanced back at Shinn. "At any rate, at least you've proven to be a capable pilot."

"Capable pilot, heck, he's a freakin' star!" Riika laughed. "Not a bad direction for your career, I guess."

At that, Shinn merely shrugged. "It's a life."

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

The room was silent and the air heavy with breath, and Kira Yamato pulled Valentine closer to him, savoring the feel of their bare skin together. After spending the better part of a month running around the Earth Sphere slaughtering people, it was far more than lovemaking he needed from his lover. Here, with her warm body pressed against his, he could also cherish the feeling of her hot, flickering presence—so close, like a candle, washing warmth over him.

She shifted in her arms. "You know you can't come back and fuck my brains out every couple of weeks," she warned. "We're just lucky you had to drop by for a briefing."

"I know."

Valentine studied Kira's face for a moment. "You're not sleeping well these days, are you?"

"How can I?" Kira asked, not liking the anguished tone in his voice. "I've spent the past two weeks on a rampage. I'm responsible for seven million deaths." He shook his head. "And...they haunt me."

"You know we have to," Valentine said.

"We have to," Kira answered, "but..."

"But you never did bury your conscience," Valentine finished, and laid her head back against his chest. "You just locked it away."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Valentine let a small smile work its way onto her lips. "Don't be sorry. Just be there. You're carrying a cross—but something will come of it that will be worth it all."

—

Kara Guinness grinned as she felt the invigoration of a purpose fulfilled rush through her, sitting in the cockpit of her VaROZ unit and working on the OS. Mars had been an endlessly frustrating exercise, a sideshow fought against a pathetic ersatz Alliance—but _this_, this was what she had been bred for. This was what burned in her veins. Revenge.

She looked around the cockpit with pride. The VaROZ was a product of ZAFT's leftover mobile suits that predated the New Millennium series. It had the lower half of a CGUE, the upper half of a GuAIZ, with donations from the GOUF Ignited and the GINN, all tuned for greater performance and responsiveness, enough to almost match the old Strike Freedom, all of it in a mobile suit designed expressly to support the new Vega Freedom in battle.

That only increased her pride, fighting in support of such a magnificent mobile suit and its heroic pilot. Kira Yamato would lead the way, burning away the Naturals and traitors who stood between them and the Coordinators' security and prosperity. They would have revenge. They would have justice. And they would have a home.

But she could deny that it was a brutal way to go. More than once she had been tempted to lower her rifle against these pitiful Naturals. She felt good about that, though—at least her capacity for her charity had not dwindled. And they were the stuff from which Blue Cosmos was born. She would kill them, as she required, and later she might feel bad about it—but not too bad.

And yet there were others who did not seem to work that way. She turned her thoughts towards Juarez, who had faltered in action far more than her. He had lost his family to the Requiem and his friends and comrades to the battle at Solomon's Sword. What did he have to hesitate for?

Kara ran a finger over the steel frame of the VaROZ's cockpit. There could be no hesitation. Not from her, not from Juarez, and not from ZAFT.

—

**April 24th, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Auel stared for a moment as Sting found his voice. "So you're telling me," he said, "that _you_ were the guy piloting that swordfighter Gundam thing in Karelia two months ago?"

Standing in front of them on one of Terminal's winding hangar gantries, the blond-haired young man before them only offered a shrug. "Shit happens." He stuck his hand forward. "Gregory Hayden. Nice to meet you."

Auel and Sting gaped for a moment before they remembered that the proper response was to shake his hand. "What...uh, what are you doing here?" Sting asked.

"Piloting a mobile suit for the Resistance, looks like," Hayden said with a smile. "What did you think I was doing here?"

"I thought you were a Phantom Pain pilot," Auel said.

Both Extended shared a glance as Hayden's smile vanished. "I was," he said, "and then some things happened, and now I'm here. Do you not trust me or something?"

Silence hung in the air around them all for a moment as Sting searched for words. "Well, uh, you _were_ fighting us in Karelia," he said awkwardly.

"I know. But, well..." He trailed off. "You guys seemed to be well aware that we had an Extended with us."

The air went tense as Auel and Sting shared another glance. "We were very aware," Sting said.

Hayden spread out his arms. "That's why I'm here."

Sting studied the young man's face for a moment, and then risked a smile. "You were a real pain in the ass to fight, you know that?"

With a barely-contained sigh of relief, Hayden broke into a grin. "Just my job."

—

"Yeah, strangulation has its merits," Trojan Noiret said airily as he drifted down the corridors of Terminal with Emily in tow, "but it's really time-consuming, and you have to keep the force applied the whole time for it to work. If you really wanna kill a man with your bare hands, you snap the neck. Grab the chin and twist. Takes only a second and it gets the job done too."

Emily smiled ironically. "No pressure points?"

"Only in kung fu films." He smirked back. "Of course, you can still do a Death Touch if you wanted to. It's just messier."

"You're the second person who's urged me to learn how to kill people outside of a mobile suit."

"It's a remarkably useful skill."

They rounded a corner together and came to a stop at an observation deck looming over the hangar where Emily's new Gundam was taking shape. The binders were currently on the floor, disassembled, with Selene on one of the gantries shouting orders to the mechanics. The mobile suit was still swathed in cables and wires, and its dull gray armor cast only a pale, diffuse reflection of the bright hangar lights.

"So that's it, huh?" Trojan asked.

"My new Gundam. Officially they're calling it the Gabriel." She shrugged. "I guess it's some angel or something."

"Yeah. Gabriel. The one who dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. And for bonus points, in Arabic his name is Jibril." He glanced at Emily, and frowned at the incredulous look on her face. "What? You try spending three years in the jungle and not reading every book you can get your hands on."

"And you passed the whole time reading religious texts?"

"The jungle is boring." He put a hand to his chin thoughtfully. "Actually, come to think of it, Gabriel is one of the angels of death too."

Emily's smile disappeared. "Is he..."

"'Angel of death over kings.'" Trojan broke into a grin. "Hey, that's pretty bitchin', huh?"

Angel of death. It followed her everywhere and gnawed at her bones, even as she put on a false smile for Trojan. "Something like that."

—

Athrun Zala cast a wistful glance towards the Earth as he drifted through the observation deck, where the blue Earth was visible through the dense Debris Belt. He glanced over at Viveka, surprised. Usually their roles were reversed, and he was the one brooding.

"What is it?" he asked, making her jump in surprise.

"N-Nothing," she said quickly, and turned her eyes back towards the planet. "Just...tired."

Athrun arched an eyebrow. It wasn't tiredness radiating from her and rousing his Newtype senses.

"Emily's going to be on her own," she went on, "until we get those new mobile suits built."

"She'll have the new Gundam. She can handle it."

"Against everyone? Like that ZAFT guy, Yamato?"

Athrun frowned. The new Gundam had mind-boggling performance, but perhaps _that_ was pushing it. "Not all of us are out of commission either," he said. "They can repair the Destiny, and we've still got the Justice and Gaia too."

Viveka looked decidedly unconvinced. "She's gonna be on her own out there. Those older machines can't keep up with the new one. I saw them testing it. It's crazy." She looked over at Athrun, the mist of fear beginning to descend over her. "She's a Natural, Athrun, she's not gonna be able to handle it. Being a Newtype doesn't make you a Coordinator."

"No," Athrun agreed, "but she'll be able to handle it." He paused. "For a price."

"A price?"

"She's spent this whole time running away from her past and trying to define her powers as something of her own," Athrun answered. He looked back at the Earth. "She won't be able to now. She'll have to embrace the training she received back then, to use the new Gundam's power to the fullest."

—

"They're almost done, you know," Shinn Asuka said quietly on the observation deck overlooking the slumbering _Minerva_.

By the window, with her arms crossed, Meyrin Hawke nodded. "We won't be here much longer, then." She leaned forward and rested her head against the glass. "I would've liked a longer rest."

Shinn landed softly by the railing. "There won't be much for us to do at the Moon, I don't think," he offered.

Meyrin smiled sadly. Of course there would be something. There was always something.

"Well, at least you're getting along with the ZAFT vets here," she said.

"It helps that they were teammates of mine," he answered. "Before the _Minerva_ launched, Riika and Courtney were test pilots for the Gaia and Chaos."

"They understood?"

"As well as can be expected."

They both gazed out over the _Minerva_ in its dock, past the ship, through the shoal zone, out into the black depths of space. The serene Earth was there—and through the haze, Shinn's eyes landed first on the white expanse of Antarctica. Every time he laid eyes on the southernmost continent, he remembered—and it always hurt.

Meyrin followed his gaze, landed on Antarctica, made the connection for herself. "I guess it's hard to understand how you felt about them. I thought you'd joined them because you had nowhere else to go."

"I did." Shinn shrugged sadly. "They gave me a home, and I did something stupid and fell in love." He shook his head. "There was really only one way for that whole thing to end, I guess. This is a bad business for falling in love."

"Is it," Meyrin said quietly—but not quietly enough. Shinn blinked at her. "You're not the only one who's been thinking about those days." She straightened back up and gestured down at the ship, as the mechanics and work pods seethed around it. "You know I used to have the world's biggest crush on you. Because you went off to play the hero, and all I really did was sit around and send you Impulse parts when you asked. And you were as powerful as I was powerless." She smiled sadly. "I'm not that person anymore, am I?"

Shinn shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not the person who asks you for Impulse parts anymore, either."

—

The Gabriel Gundam loomed above them, dark and menacing, and Rau Le Creuset had to admit that Terminal had done a wonderful job with its sleek, thruster-studded body and glowering face. It had removed all of the weapons Emily rarely or never used in battle, like the boomerangs and anti-ship sword, and upgraded all the ones she did—like that giant shimmering beam sword.

And it had that Voiture Lumiere system. That had been Selene's handiwork.

"You've done a magnificent job, Ms. McGriff," Rau said with a grin. "It will be unstoppable."

Selene eyed him suspiciously. "You've taken quite a lot of interest in this thing's development, considering that you're not going to be piloting it."

"Of course. Am I to be blamed for wanting the _Minerva_ to have at its disposal as effective a weapon as possible?"

Turning that over in her mind, Selene looked back up at the slumbering Gabriel. "As long as you don't try to abuse this power. It's got the potential to revolutionize mobile suit combat, and make mobile suits far more destructive than they've ever been. That's not something I want the Stargazer responsible for."

"Of course it's not," Rau chuckled. "Although I'll respectfully point out that it's already going to do that anyway. The Earth Alliance and ZAFT will not simply stand by without replicating this technology—especially not ZAFT, since they have a working prototype."

Selene frowned at the thought. "Emily will end the war," she said. "She promised me. She'll use the Stargazer's power to end this nightmare for all of us."

Rau turned away, towards the shadows. "Yes, so I've heard," he said. "Trust the Angel of Death to end a war."

—

To be continued...


	11. Phase 11: Twilight Again

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 11 - Twilight Again

—

**April 25th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance Arzachel Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Vice Admiral Kevin Mathis felt a shiver run up his spine as the information ticked by on Arzachel Crater's control room main screen. There was no mistake. Terminal had been found.

Mathis straightened out his service coat. The dense wreckage of the Debris Belt and the clever camouflage by the Resistance had hid it from conventional scans, but not from the invisible eye of a Phantom Pain N Dagger sidling through the debris. And with Colonel Joaquin's _Lucifer_ closing in and the _Charlemagne_ not far behind, it was the ideal time to attack. Lord Djibril had recognized that as well—which was why he had personally ordered the strike. Destroy the space stronghold of the Resistance and deprive ZAFT of a potential ally.

But for that, Colonel Joaquin had requested—to put it charitably—the help of the Earth Alliance Space Force. And Mathis was the only flag officer available to lead an expedition against Terminal. He had sent out the order to pull back a detachment of warships—but their assignments to hunt down ZAFT units would have to wait.

At that, Mathis's blood boiled. It was a waste of resources, time, men, and effort to attack the Resistance. Not while ZAFT was around, and not considering what ZAFT was doing to the already-suffering people of the Earth Sphere. What did it matter if ZAFT struck a deal with this ragtag band of guerrillas? Hadn't Carpentaria and Operation _Typhoon_ taken care of them already? ZAFT could not stand against the full weight of the Earth Alliance, once assembled—but sideshows like Terminal delayed that final strike, and delays were costly.

Mathis glanced back up at the screen, where the N Dagger's image of Terminal floating serenely amid the junk bored itself through his skull. Perhaps Lord Djibril had a point. Terminal, after all, seemed to have a propulsion system. It could be moved. And intelligence suggested that it had been a ZAFT development base before Solomon's Sword.

Either way, it would be a problem—and it would have to be dealt with.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

The air nearly rang with exultation as Joaquin ran over the messages from Arzachel Crater. Vice Admiral Mathis would assemble a task force over the next few days, send them into the Debris Belt, and bring down the hammer on Terminal. One of the white whales that had evaded the Alliance for three years would finally meet its end, and ZAFT would have reason to think twice about an alliance with the Resistance.

Standing on the bridge, Joaquin grinned wolfishly at Ortega. "We've got a great opportunity before us, captain. We'll have the chance to lead the assault on Terminal. If we get there before Mathis, we're going to be at the head of the battle."

Ortega shifted uncomfortably in the captain's chair. "It's not a good idea to go ahead of the rest of the fleet, colonel."

"Are you saying this ship can't hold up against some Resistance mooks for a little while?"

"No sir, I'm saying this one ship can't fight an entire fleet by itself—and that's probably what's waiting for us at Terminal."

Joaquin waved it off. "All we need to do is be seen leading the attack. And all we _really_ need is for ND HE to perform at his best. He and the Raigo will be unstoppable. The _Minerva_ has lost its Gundams and the Resistance can't make up for that. You'll see."

The colonel took his leave and Ortega sat back with a discouraged sigh. Of course the _Minerva_ had lost its Gundams. But it had presumably spent the past few days at Terminal...and who knew what was going on in _there_.

—

That man.

That man, his presence, his _feeling_ shot through the mind of ND HE like a pinball. That man, with that presence that felt so familiar, even though he could never recall feeling it before...

The feeling that emanated from the pilot of the Infinite Justice gnawed at ND HE's mind. He could not remember ever meeting someone with that aura before—but his recollections only included training and treatments at Althea Crater.

But the memories were there anyway. He saw a little green bird fluttering in the wind before him. He felt a cool breeze, a cloud of pink flower petals, a strange mixture of gratitude and sadness, happiness and regret. The blurry image of a blue-haired boy fixed itself in his mind. But he had never known anyone of the sort at Althea Crater.

ND HE turned over in his maintenance pod. That man, and that feeling, continued to claw at him. He struggled to push them down. There was no reason to hesitate about _him_—because no matter what, he was an enemy. It was a trick. That's all it was—a trick, the Resistance had somehow managed to do something to trick him. That was what they'd told him would happen at Althea Crater. They'd try to make him think he was someone he was not. That was why they made him wear the mask—so nobody could know his identity, and thus, nobody could tell him who he was and was not.

Least of all, he reflected, _that man_.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Mudie Holcroft watched silently from the _Charlemagne_'s observation deck as the Debris Belt drifted by around the vast black battleship. Maintenance to the Artemis was complete; reports were filed; hell, even her bunk was cleaned. And since Shams was off doing other things and pool was excruciatingly difficult to play in microgravity, that left her nothing to do.

Mudie Holcroft hated having nothing to do. That was when she wound up thinking, and that never ended well.

She wished she could be back down with the Artemis, which made people respect her, even more than the Blu Duel ever had. Or even with Shams, since he had long ago lost his colleagues' fascination with her cleavage and treated her with some shred of respect and dignity. With the Artemis, people were forced to respect her, because the Artemis made her powerful. It had speed and mobility, enough to slalom its way through the worst the Debris Belt had to offer on a test run. Conscious thought had given way to reflex and the invigorating feeling of _power_, of being respected for what she could do.

And Shams had been impressed as well. There was no way the Vanguard could have pulled off the acrobatics Mudie had coaxed out of the Artemis.

Shams. He didn't need her to be in the Artemis to treat her like a human. Mudie hated to think what that meant to her.

—

"The key is to just stay moving every time you're not firing the cannon," Shams explained with crossed arms. Grey, Merau, and Erin all drifted around him, all of them watched by the dark eyes of the Hail Buster. Shams relished the idea of being the heroic veteran ace to whom wide-eyed younger pilots looked up, but only Erin seemed to actually be playing that role. Grey and Merau had the air of well-worn colleagues, and that was nowhere near as gratifying to Shams' ego. "It helps that you've got the Mirage Colloid up there too."

Merau grinned up at the Hail Buster. "Yeah, that makes everything easier. You can fire, cloak, move wherever you want, uncloak, fire again...it's great."

"Yeah, well, just make sure you stay out your allies' way," Shams replied. "Mirage Colloid means _everyone_ can't see you, us included."

As they began chattering about tactics and the last battle, Shams glanced back up towards the Hail Buster's silent face. It called to mind his old Verde Buster, the remains of which were probably rotting in a hangar somewhere in Yokosuka. And the Verde Buster called to mind simpler times, when the Alliance was pitted against ZAFT, when good and evil were nice and clear, when the missions were way more fun...and when he didn't give much of a shit about his teammates.

—

With the Crusader Gundam towering above him, Sven Cal Bayan sat back on the gantry railing and stared into the dark eyes of his mobile suit. Yukiko's words from the other day still rang in his head. An Extended.

Absolutely not. An Extended was what happened when a human was controlled in every way. The Extended relied for their very survival on a benefactor, the absence of which would signal their very bodies to begin slowly dying as a failsafe to keep their secrets from falling into enemy hands. Sven's flesh crawled at the idea of being so dependent on someone that he would literally begin to die without them.

What the Extended got in exchange for that hideous transformation was a bevy of new skills. The reflexes, cognition, healing factors, stamina, immunity, strength, and speed of Coordinators, geared specifically for military application rather than just making some couple's child the best in the neighborhood. That was what separated the Extended from the Coordinators. The Coordinators existed because of human greed, for prestige and status and money; the Extended were there because Coordinators were militarily useful.

But those skills were nothing Sven could not learn on his own. He could stand up to Shinn Asuka, one of the best mobile suit pilots in the Earth Sphere. He defeated the Destiny at Arnhelm. There was no need to turn him into an Extended.

Sven clenched his fists around the railing. If he became an Extended, he would sacrifice all his control...and then there would be nothing to stop that damned little child.

—

"What do you mean we're not taking part?"

Yukiko stood with clenched fists and a furious look on her face on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, eyes fixed on Danilov and Vera. The former merely shrugged.

"The debris is too dense near Terminal for the _Charlemagne_ to navigate. We'll have to wait in clearer pastures for survivors from the attack."

"That's cowardice!" Yukiko exclaimed. "There's nothing in the Debris Belt that can stop this ship, and it's not like you don't have, I don't know, _guns_ or something. I can't believe you're passing up an opportunity to gather more combat data on the Crusader."

"Miss Nakajima, we cannot move the ship into a debris zone that dense without risking damage," Vera shot back. "It would be grossly irresponsible."

"The only important thing is getting the Crusader into action! If you can do that, then nothing else matters!"

Danilov stepped in between the two women. "I will not risk this ship simply for an experiment," he said, "and we will have ample opportunities to test the Crusader elsewhere."

"Not against the _Minerva_ you won't!" Yukiko snapped. "What if they get destroyed?"

At that, Danilov glanced at Vera with a wry smile. "If I know the _Minerva_, Miss Nakajima, that won't be an issue. They'll pop out, and we'll be waiting for them."

—

**Resistance **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Star One**_**, Debris Belt**

The _Star One_ came to a halt in the cloud of debris, and on the bridge, Aoma Vedlow sat back and watched as the lights among the junk began to flicker. It was always a risk to gather her fleet in one place, but the ships were due for some leave, and Aoma hated to think of what the crews might do if they had to spend too long bunched up in there. Iron-fisted discipline, trust, training, and rewards had forged the Vedlow Fleet into a feared and professional fighting force, but its crew were still human beings—many of them with criminal histories unsavory enough to make their commander think twice about her demands of them.

There had been commotion at Arzachel. The _Procyon_, one of the _Drake_-class destroyers "liberated" from the Space Force by a crew with a conscience, had been quietly hovering near enough to the base for its high-powered telescopes to pick up ships coming and going from Arzachel's spaceport with increased frequency. There were numerous explanations, like gearing up for an assault on Messiah that for some reason had still not yet taken place.

But the _Minerva_ had gone to Terminal, and the Resistance could afford to take no chances with its final remaining stronghold. Terminal held their best engineers, and it was more or less the Vedlow Fleet's home base. The DSSD personnel crowding into the _Altair_, the Vedlow Fleet's rickety _Marseille III_-class freighter, were seething with anger at ZAFT for the Troya attack. Perhaps they could help the Resistance.

Aoma watched as the operation wound its way to its conclusion. With the fleet reassembled, they would proceed back to Terminal. If the rumors were to be believed, Chiao Xu was in talks with ZAFT—but the Resistance was likely brewing a large-scale attack on some Alliance target to prove to Sunogachi that they were a credible force, after that defeat at Carpentaria.

And of course, the Vedlow Fleet would have to lead the charge.

—

**April 26th, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, orbit of Earth**

"I'll admit I am no expert on the medical aspects of an Extended," said Mikhail Coast with a shrug, "but judging from the existing research and your descriptions, surgery and treatment to reverse what changes are possible would take roughly six years, and you would never be rid of some of the effects."

In Coast's office, Sting and Auel glanced at each other. "Six _years?_" Sting echoed.

"Six years. Of course, the only Extended that I've fully examined is Ms. Loussier, and there may be differences between male and female subjects, and with the modifications."

Auel cracked a smirk. "Did you find any of those loose marbles of hers?"

"If I may say so," Coast continued, "from a medical standpoint you don't need to reverse these changes. You've taken care of much of the psychological work yourselves, and you don't seem to be as heavily modified as Ms. Loussier."

"It's not a medical thing," Sting answered. "It's a...I dunno, an emotional thing, or something." He glanced awkwardly at Auel. "We don't really want to be Extended. We'll hold off on that treatment until the war is over and we don't need to be anymore, but when that day comes..." He shrugged. "We don't want to be the Alliance's toy soldiers forever."

Coast regarded them impassively for a moment. "It will be exhausting and relentless, and you'll be miserable for six years of your lives," he warned.

Auel snorted. "Can't be worse than what we've already done."

—

Shinn Asuka watched with something similar to satisfaction as the Destiny was pieced back together by a skeleton crew of _Minerva_ mechanics. Terminal had the last cache of spare parts for the Destiny and Twilight, and with the new Gabriel nearing its rollout, the Destiny was the one to benefit this time. At least he could return to the fight, even if his machine was now outclassed.

The Destiny was near the end of its life, and that thought brought him some sadness. After all they had been through together—the end of the Junius War and the battles of this war—it was a little upsetting to think that his mighty Gundam was soon to meet its end.

On the other hand, it had only been around for some of his failures...like his failure to save Lunamaria Hawke, whose ghostly specter his failing brain seemed to believe was hovering behind him this time.

_Ignoring me isn't going to make me go away,_ Luna put in.

"Why not? I'm going crazy anyway."

_If you were just going crazy it wouldn't be me who's here, it'd be Rey, since you got way more guilt tied up with him than you do with me_.

Shinn blinked and glanced over at what he was fairly certain was the ghostly image to his right. "How the hell do you know that?"

_You tell me, Mr. Hallucinating Guy._ She shrugged—and Shinn noticed for the first time that she was wearing her old ZAFT Red uniform...the one she had worn when she had played the role of his friend for so long. _I don't know what's got you all bummed out, though. They're putting the Destiny back together and you're all safe and sound and your little protégé is even getting a sweet new ride. And the people here don't really hate you that much!_

"It's not that. It's that every time I wind up meeting ZAFT vets, it reminds me of the time I spent there—and all those failures."

_Well, stop it_.

Shinn frowned. "Thanks, Luna. What would I do without you?"

_Go nuts, probably. _She paused and seemed to study his face for a moment. _You know, brooding about all the dead people in your life is only going to help make sure you have _more_ dead people in your life._

Shinn glanced back at her and felt the pain of losing her come flooding back. "Am I supposed to forget?"

_No. You're supposed to move on._

—

"Glittering Star J" was what they called him, for those white mobile suits he piloted that supposedly glittered in the sunlight and scared the wits out of enemy pilots. The serene air around him unnerved Emily, as she watched the soldier in an older style Orb uniform hand out orders to a team of mechanics on the gantry overlooking a white Murasame. He was a former Alliance ace, they said, and as he turned towards her she couldn't help but wonder how such a man had made his way in the Earth Alliance.

"So you're the 'Angel of Death' I've heard so much about," he said with a smile, and extended his hand, which Emily hesitantly shook. "I'm Captain Jean Carrey. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Oldendorf."

Emily glanced nervously at his serene, unreadable face. "Y-you too."

"We've been all abuzz waiting for you," Carrey continued, and gestured across the hangar—towards the brooding Gabriel. "Rumor has had it that the Resistance's rising new star was actually a young girl. Normally I wouldn't believe such talk, but stranger things have happened, and you're not the only one so young to fight like this."

Instead of responding, Emily turned her eyes towards the Gabriel. She would have to think of a better name for it than that. No sense running around in a Gundam named after Lord Djibril. "I didn't realize I was so special."

"You're one of a select few," Carrey said with a shrug. "Not many pilots have skills like yours." He smiled knowingly at her. "Though I do wonder how you got that nickname."

Emily thought back to Lily, and only one answer seemed appropriate. "By killing people."

Carrey did not seem amused, and Emily opened her mouth to apologize, but he cut her off. "There is another way to fight this war, and you're skilled enough to do it. You could just disable mobile suits."

"Just disable them?"

"Exactly. It requires an adjustment to your fighting style, but if you aim for the limbs and head, you can remove mobile suits from combat."

Emily looked at him skeptically. "Does it work?"

"No."

"Wh—what? What do you mean—?"

Jean Carrey looked down with a smile that turned sad from the anguish radiating from within him. "Disabling mobile suits removes combat units from the battlefield, but it does not remove whatever motivates a soldier to go fight in one in the first place." He shrugged again. "Some soldiers are intimidated enough by the sheer display of skill it takes to effectively and quickly disable a mobile suit in combat that they stay out of future fights. Most are not."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because I must." He pointed again at the sleeping Gabriel. "How many soldiers do you think you've killed, Miss Oldendorf? Hundreds, perhaps, or thousands? And nobody would really fault you for doing so, because you were a soldier—except for the friends and family and comrades of the soldiers that you killed. And they won't forget the pain that you caused them, and for some of them, that pain will become strong enough to drive them to pick up weapons and fight. And then someone else will die, and the cycle will never stop."

Emily squirmed. "But if it doesn't work, then why are you doing it?"

"Because I must not cause that pain to others, even if my practice of disabling mobile suits does not end the war any faster." He chuckled to himself. "And creates some problems for my allies, I suppose. We filled the brig to overflowing with captured Alliance pilots."

Annoyance crept up Emily's throat, and she saw why Shinn and Athrun, skilled as they were, disregarded this idea entirely. "But if you're just putting your allies in danger, then why go to all this effort?"

Carrey gestured again at the Gabriel. "War will not end due to the actions of a single pilot, whether that pilot kills or merely disarms his enemies in battle," he answered. "But disarming my enemies while sparing their lives may work some changes in some of them, perhaps, and that chance is enough to satisfy me. And those changed hearts may go on to change still more hearts, until perhaps there are enough people who reject this violence to truly make a difference. It will achieve more than just killing them." He smiled back. "Don't you agree?"

Emily glanced over at the Gabriel, at the machine fit for the Angel of Death. "I guess," she said, and turned away.

—

**April 27th, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

"Quite the monster you've built here," Meyrin said with a tone halfway between approval and apprehension. Selene drifted by her side, both of them at the feet of the Gabriel Gundam. The binders on its back were complete, meaning that technically the Gabriel was ready for combat, and Emily was experiencing the great fun of reading through a gigantic tech manual.

Selene smiled sadly. "Sol would be proud."

Meyrin awkwardly glanced at her watch and tried to change the subject. "The Vedlow Fleet called in yesterday. They said they would arrive at Terminal tomorrow. They're carrying the other survivors from Troya Station, so you'll be reunited with your colleagues."

For a moment, Selene gazed up into the Gabriel's eyes, before she sighed wistfully. "That's good," she said, "but what would we do? Our research was saved, but the Stargazer was captured and our facility was destroyed." She shrugged. "I can't rebuild the Stargazer without proper manufacturing and testing facilities."

"Terminal is not a good place for that," Meyrin warned. "Especially not out here in the Debris Belt, and not with ZAFT still running around. Maybe you should get back in touch with DSSD?"

Selene shook her head. "I haven't heard from them since the attack on Troya. Either they've been taken over by the Alliance or they've shut down and gone into hiding, to save whatever research they have. The central office would be the first target."

Meyrin shifted uncomfortably. "You guys have that many nifty little secrets?"

There was no reply from Selene, her eyes still fixed on the Gabriel.

—

"Yes," Shinn sighed as he and Riika made their way down a corridor on pull-bars, "it's true. I totally had a crush on you at Armory 1."

Riika's face lit up in triumph. "I _knew_ it!" she laughed. "So what about me caught your eye, huh? My natural wit and charm? My overwhelming beauty? My incredible skills with the Gaia?"

Shinn shrugged. "You looked hot in that flight suit."

Deflated, Riika reached over and smacked Shinn in the shoulder. "Jerk."

"What? I was fifteen." He paused for a devilish smirk. "Don't tell me you never appreciated how clingy those things could be."

"Oh, shut up."

Victorious for now, Shinn decided to change the subject. "So where did Courtney go?"

"Maintenance on the Proto Chaos." Riika glanced awkwardly towards the wall. "But, uh, we should probably leave him alone."

"Is he holding a grudge?"

"...sort of. He's...kinda the reason I'm still alive." They came to a stop by one of the observation decks and Riika halted herself against the railing. "My mobile suit was destroyed during the Alliance's attack and we were cut off from the escape ships, so we got left behind. He packed me into the last Proto Chaos unit left and we slipped away in the confusion." She shrugged sadly. "It was rough. We lost friends. He thinks if you and the _Minerva_ hadn't done what you did, that never would have happened."

Shinn glanced towards the stars uncomfortably. "Guess I shouldn't be too surprised."

"Look Shinn," Riika went on, grabbing his wrist and reclaiming his attention, "I don't pretend to know why you deserted, and I don't think you would have singlehandedly turned the tide of the war or something. But tell me, did you hate us? The Coordinators? ZAFT?"

Shinn closed his eyes, the memories of Luna and Rey bubbling within him. "I thought I hated you at the time," he said. "Now I realize that I was just scared." He shrugged. "If it's any consolation, I lost just about everything too in that war."

Riika shook her head. "That's no consolation at all."

—

Sting Oakley sat back quietly in the crew lounge overlooking Terminal's docking bay and peered at the girl Emily had said was an Extended as she entered the room. She had the look of an Extended about her, anyway; those wide eyes, with the quiet fear of a creature that depended entirely on something else for its existence, told all that needed to be said.

Auel struck first as he glanced up from his sandwich. "And who are you?"

Lily pouted. "Doesn't _anyone_ know who I am? I'm Lily Thevalley, the Blood Knight of Outer Space!"

"Never heard of ya."

"Oh come on! I'm an ace! I shot down, like, two battleships!"

Auel grinned back and held up five fingers, and Lily's jaw dropped in disbelief. "That's right, baby, five battleships, all in one battle last year at L5. I think they that's when they started calling me the Blue Comet or something like that."

"No they didn't, Auel," Sting spoke up in annoyance, "and you didn't shoot down five battleships, you jackass. We both did, and Stella helped too."

"Sting over there is just jealous 'cuz nobody gave him a cooler nickname than 'Cocksucking Motherfucker,'" Auel said with a dismissive wave, and quickly changed the subject before Sting could retaliate. "What are you doing in here anyway?"

Lily glanced dubiously between the two of them for a moment. "Um, I was looking for Emily."

"Working on the Gabriel." Auel waved again, in the general direction of the hangar. "What's got you so interested in her anyway?" He looked up when he got no answer and found Lily heading out the door, and he glanced over at Sting. "The hell's that about?"

His mood darkening, Sting watched Lily disappear around the door frame. Definitely an Extended.

—

Cagalli's pendant drifted between them on the observation deck overlooking the _Minerva_, where the winged warship was coming back together after its worst beating yet. Athrun glanced at the polished little stone for a moment, and then over at Viveka, leaning against the wall.

"So what would you two have done together?" she started, and Athrun picked the pendant out of the air and looped it back around his neck.

"She would have become the leader of Orb, and I would've been her bodyguard or something like that."

Viveka smiled. "How romantic."

"I guess." He looked back down towards the _Minerva_. "We would have had to defend Orb constantly. It had Morgenroete and Kaguya and abundant geothermal energy, and if the Sahakus had been dealt with it would have eventually had an orbital elevator and more resource colonies too. Orb would have been a prosperous and advanced nation." He shook his head. "Not with Jona Roma Seiran in charge, though."

Viveka shifted uneasily. "Are you going to go back there after the war is over?"

"And do what?" Athrun shrugged. "Cagalli was the one who was meant to rule Orb. Her father had been trying to groom her for the position, before the Valentine War broke out." He smiled sadly at the memory. "It hadn't gone too well."

"So what _are_ you going to do?"

They were silent for a moment, before Athrun quietly sighed. "We'll see how this war ends."

—

**April 28th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Agamemnon**_**-class carrier **_**Henry Clay**_

Only the sounds of a bridge crew at work on a warship underway filled the bridge of the _Henry Clay_ and reached the ears of Admiral Mathis, brooding in the command chair and fixing his eyes on the desolate sweep of the Debris Belt.

It was a fairly impressive feat to have accomplished, dragging together a fleet of three _Agamemnon_-class ships, six _Nelson_ battleships, and eighteen _Drake_-class destroyers. With the _Lucifer_ approaching from the other side, that gave him twenty-eight ships and almost two hundred and fifty mobile suits to work with. It was a respectable battle force, suitable, he hoped, for crushing the Resistance's hideout. But the Phantom Pain scouts had only discovered Terminal's location and verified the presence of seven ships; who knew what else was lying in wait in the Debris Belt?

Mathis rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The Space Force was well-trained for battles in the Debris Belt, and the _Minerva_ was said to be heavily damaged, its host of Gundams out of commission. But they were still there, and Mathis would not underestimate them.

The _Charlemagne_, he knew, would be sorely missed. One blast from their main guns would silence this miserable place forever. But that was not to be, and so in the meantime he would visit upon them a wrath that would end their war. The sooner he did that, the sooner he and the rest of the Alliance could turn their full attention towards their real enemy.

"Navigator," he called out, "time to arrival?"

"Five hours, nineteen minutes, sir," came the answer.

Mathis sat back. Five hours and nineteen minutes until he could get this over with and go back to the real war.

—

"Don't mess with the settings file! I'll do the adjustments manually!"

Standing on a gantry in the _Clay_'s cavernous hangar, Captain Morgan Chevalier stared up tiredly towards the face of his personal mobile suit. The Windam, painted in the colors of his old 105 Dagger, had served him well through this war, but its age was beginning to show.

The Gunbarrel Striker locked into place, and Morgan glanced over towards the ship's grizzled head mechanic. "I suppose we ran the last overhaul this machine can take, have we?"

The mechanic merely shrugged. "You want something better, captain, you should transfer to the Phantom Pain. You know they get all the cool new toys first."

Morgan frowned. "That isn't done without a price." He looked back up at his Windam. "You replaced the gunbarrels' railguns with beam cannons like I asked?"

"Beam cannons, and we modified the gunbarrels themselves to work wirelessly." The mechanic called up a diagram on his tablet. "It'll take input the same way the wired gunbarrels did, but you'll be able to manipulate them faster since they're not wired. Sorta like those DRAGOON things the ZAFT-built machines use. We nabbed the wireless control scheme from the RGX-01 Chaos back when the Phantom Pain operated it."

"Nice," Morgan said with a smirk, and turned his eyes back towards the Windam's dark visor. _I hear they've got a new ace pilot, too. I'm looking forward to meeting you, Miss Angel of Death._

—

**Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Vice Admiral Oshida forced down the beginnings of panic in his chest with practiced ease. He had been through this before.

Before him on the main screen of Terminal's control room was a rough camera feed of the approaching Alliance fleet. He held up a hand and snapped his fingers, drawing the attention of the panicking operators. "There's that fleet approaching from ten o'clock," he said, "and that _Archangel_-class coming from three o'clock. Give me the ETA."

One of the operators below composed herself. "Fleet's ETA is about four and a half hours, _Archangel_-class is doing a full burn and should be here at about the same time."

Oshida frowned and picked up the intercom. "All personnel, this is Vice Admiral Oshida. The enemy has discovered our location, ETA four hours or less. Escape is not a practical solution in our present condition. We will stand and fight. All combat personnel, to your stations. All engine room crew, prepare the thrust assembly. Everyone else, gather whatever we can carry from the external wings and destroy the rest. We will purge whatever we can't take with us in two hours." He paused and turned the intercom aside. "Give me the ETA for Vedlow's fleet."

The operator down below nervously consulted her console. "Five hours minimum, sir."

"We will be joined by the Vedlow Fleet in five hours," Oshida continued. "All hands, prepare for battle."

—

The mechanic on the gantry in front of a motley squadron of mobile suits jumped in surprise as Meyrin Hawke landed next to him.

"You," she said, "my pilots need five mobile suits from Terminal's garrison. Can you supply them?"

"Y-Yes," the mechanic started, "but captain, we've got more pilots than machines, and—"

"Good enough," Meyrin said, and turned around, where Abbey was waiting. "We're going back to the ship to get the repairs finished. Ask Oshida to cut us loose now, so we can try to hide and finish the repairs, then jump back into the fight unexpectedly."

Abbey arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "You already have a plan?"

Meyrin smirked back and tapped her temple. "Two steps ahead. Let's go."

—

Back into the battle. The vacation was fun while it lasted.

Shinn Asuka landed as gracefully as he could in front of his reborn Destiny Gundam, fresh out of the hangars with its repairs complete. At least he wouldn't be helpless out here, and at least nobody had said anything about the _Charlemagne_...although it was not something he had ruled out yet.

"Shinn," Sting's voice called, and he turned around to find Sting, Auel, and Stella touching down next to him. "We're gonna head out in a Gunner ZAKU and a Duel Dagger, but you'll have to do the heavy lifting for us out there."

"Right." Shinn glanced over reassuringly at Stella. "You'll have the Gaia, Justice, and Destiny out there to count on."

He turned his eyes back towards his aging machine and hoped it would stay that way.

—

"What do you mean it's not done?" Emily wailed. She stood with Trojan on the gantry in front of the silent Gabriel Gundam, as Selene shouted orders to the mechanics below. Selene spared her a frustrated glance.

"We have final adjustments to make on the Voiture Lumiere so it will be stable," she explained. "Otherwise it might cut out or explode on you in the middle of battle. It won't take long, but you'll have to sortie in some other mobile suit first, or wait for us to finish."

"You can't do that," Trojan sputtered. "We need every available hand out there."

Emily ran a hand through her hair. "Trojan, go find me a mobile suit, with a Natural-use OS. I'll go out and fight while you finish the Gundam. Let me know when you're done and I'll switch machines."

"Alright," Trojan said, "but where's Lily?"

"Camped out in that modified Savior. Hurry."

Trojan took off down the gantry, and Selene looked again at Emily. "Are you sure you want to risk fighting in an inferior machine? The Gabriel's adjustments aren't going to take that long; you could wait here until they're done."

Emily shook her head. "No way am I just sitting in here while everyone else risks their lives." She paused and shot a look over at her new Gundam's glowering face. "And can I change that thing's name?"

Selene blinked. "Um, why?"

"I don't wanna fly a Gundam named after Lord Djibril."

"But it's not named after—"

"Yes it is. Djibril is the Arabic name for Gabriel."

Selene frowned and gave up. "Well, alright, then what _are_ you calling it?"

Emily fell silent for a moment as her mind searched for a better name for her Gundam than one that reminded her of the Earth Alliance President, and an instant later, inspiration struck. "Eclipse. Call it the Gundam Eclipse."

"Why Eclipse?"

"Because," Emily said, and turned towards the direction Trojan had taken, "that's what it's gonna do."

She glanced one more time at the Gundam as Selene and her crew set back to work.

_That's what it's already doing._

—

To be continued...


	12. Phase 12: Summon the Angel

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note: I've changed the name of the Raigo Gundam's Speculum Striker pack to Arrowhead. I think the Raigo deserves a little more dignity than can be accorded by naming it after the thing the gynecologist uses to look inside your hooha.

—

Phase 12 - Summon the Angel

—

**April 28th, CE 77 - Resistance space fortress Terminal, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

"Terminal can still move without a problem," said Oshida as orders and information flew through Terminal's control room, "but we would just be delaying the inevitable if all we did was run away. We have to hand their military force a defeat to prevent them from following us first."

On the screen, Meyrin Hawke frowned from the _Minerva_'s bridge. "If we stand and fight we'll be a stationary target. They have our location data; they could always turn the Requiem on us."

Oshida smirked. "If they wanted to use the Requiem they wouldn't have sent a fleet. They must want to capture us."

"I suppose," Meyrin said skeptically. "We're almost done with our repairs. Hopefully the enemy won't notice that we've cut loose, and we'll be able to take them by surprise."

"Hopefully." He glanced over at the tactical map. "What's the _Guevara_ doing? It's out too far in front! Pull it back!"

—

"Is this some kind of joke?"

Standing on the gantry in front of a lone mobile suit with Trojan in tow, Emily turned back towards him and all he could do was shrug.

"It was all that was left that had a Natural-use OS, unless you want to pilot a Mistral or something," he defended. Emily turned back with a sigh towards the waiting Slaughter Dagger and hopped into the cockpit. He didn't have that air of smug self-satisfaction about him, so perhaps he was being sincere. "I don't get why you're so touchy about that nickname, though."

Emily glanced back up at him. "I'll tell you later. Get to your own machine, I'm going out." The hatch swung shut and Trojan took off down the gantry as Emily put on her helmet and fastened the seals. Selene's face appeared on one of the auxiliary monitors a moment later.

"We've got another thirty minutes' worth of adjustments to make," she said. "I'll let you know as soon as we're done. Hold out until then."

"Right." The screen went dark and Emily sat back as the gates opened. "This is Emily, I'm launching."

There was no catapult available, so Emily simply marched the Dagger forward and pushed off into space. The enemy fleet was gathering up ahead, and the handful of Resistance ships surrounding Terminal were already in position, as mobile suits streamed out onto what would soon be the battlefield.

Emily swallowed hard and waited for the enemy to open fire.

—

The Destiny and Gaia Gundams rocketed out into space with Riika's dark blue Blaze ZAKU Phantom between them. In the Destiny's cockpit, Shinn scanned his eyes over the approaching enemy—Windams in the standard white and blue of the Space Force.

"Stella, use the space junk to your advantage," he said. "Set up with the sniper rifle and pick off as many of them as you can."

"Okay." The Gaia peeled off and headed for the wreckage of a large satellite, and Riika's ZAKU fell in besides the Destiny.

"That's the Extended you left for?" Riika began, and Shinn nodded.

"She wanted me to protect her."

"Then shouldn't you go back with her, so you _can_ protect her?"

Shinn smirked. "I didn't say she needed it. They're moving in, break formation!"

The two mobile suits lunged apart as a squad of Windams opened fire with their beam rifles. Shinn glanced over at Riika as she took cover behind her shields, and then leveled off his own rifle to return fire. The Windams split up—only for another beam blast to come tearing out of space and plow through one enemy's cockpit, blowing it apart in a dazzling fireball.

Shinn smiled. "See? Cover me, I'm going in close!"

—

"Those things again!" snarled Athrun as the Infinite Justice roared into battle. A green GuAIZ rushed in at its side, and in the cockpit Viveka glanced up towards the Gundam.

"What things?"

"Mobile suits that showed up at Arnhelm. They have lightwave barriers. And—" Athrun trailed off, as the pressure washed over him. "And that clone...!"

Viveka turned her eye towards the enemy and promptly rammed her GuAIZ into the Justice, driving both mobile suits to the left—just as a wave of beam fire coursed through the battlefield. "Pay attention, dammit! I can't do all the fighting in this old GuAIZ!"

Athrun shook his head and fixed his attention on the charging Raigo. "Hang back and give me fire support. Call in Romero's team." He rocketed ahead and switched his beam rifle to his left hand, giving him room to draw a beam saber with his right. "One Kira is enough."

Up ahead, inside the Arrowhead Raigo Gundam, ND HE faltered as the pressure hit his mind. That man was there again, and he saw that blue-haired boy and that green robot bird and all those flower petals...

He clenched his fists around the Raigo's controls. "Get out of my head!" The Raigo swapped its rifle for a saber and charged, and with a crash the two mobile suits came slamming together. "Hyperion team, get around him!"

The Hyperion Gs swept in, beam machineguns at the ready, and Athrun ground his teeth. "_Perfect!_"

With a flash of thruster exhaust, the Justice lunged up—just in time for the GuAIZ to pummel them all with beam rifle blasts, supported by a half dozen more mobile suits. Athrun seized his chance, rushed forward, and tore the first Hyperion G's rifle in two with a quick saber hack. The Hyperion G backed away and readied its lightwave barrier, as the other three opened fire and forced the Justice on the defensive.

Athrun whirled around to parry a saber blow from the Raigo and darted away again as it pressed the attack. He scanned the battlefield again and caught sight of the Hyperions, fixing his eyes on the one he had just deprived of its rifle. "I'll get rid of you four first, and then..."

—

The Gunner ZAKU landed hard on a piece of debris, and with a shout Auel swung up his cannon and opened fire—and a moment later, the blast plowed through a charging Windam and tore it to pieces. Auel smirked with satisfaction—but then he yelped in surprise and jammed back the controls as three more Windams emerged from the smoke cloud, beam rifles blazing.

Instead, another Windam with a blue Aile Striker on its back rushed down into the fray and slammed the leading Windam aside with a hard kick to the chest. The blue Windam darted back, leveled off its rifle, and finished off its adversary with a salvo through the cockpit.

"Auel," Hayden started, even as he pulled back in front of the two remaining Windams, "enemy second wave! Focus on them!"

"Yeah, yeah," grunted Auel, and he searched the black, choked skies for a target—but an instant later he yanked back the controls again and abandoned his little piece of wreckage as another Windam lunged up from beneath it, beam rifle drawn. "Where the—?"

He fell silent as a red beam from behind and above lanced out of nowhere, plowed through the Windam's cockpit, and blew it apart. Auel grunted under the shockwave and blinked in surprise as something white and red blasted by his field of vision.

"The fuck—is that the Chaos?"

"Proto Chaos," corrected the voice of Sting Oakley, and a moment later his Duel Dagger, bulked up with the heavy Fortrestra armor, dropped in next to Auel's ZAKU. "Prototype mobile armor version of the Chaos. Pretty sweet." The Duel Dagger darted to the side, swung up its beam rifle, and opened fire in time to ward off another oncoming enemy. "Don't just sit there waiting for someone to put a dick in your mouth, Auel, we have a job to do!"

"What—fuck you, Sting!"

Hayden's Windam backed in between them both. "Not the time for that, guys. Incoming!"

—

"The DOM's got a Natural-use OS loaded, so I'll be okay," Trojan said as his green DOM Trooper cruised into battle, toting the Green Frame's abandoned custom beam rifle, "and you'll probably kick ass regardless."

Emily arched an eyebrow. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." She glanced over to the right. "Lily?"

An angry wail responded. "Nobody said this thing was gonna be _white!_" Sure enough, a bone-white mobile suit that, as Emily recalled, was named the Vent Savior dropped into formation in its mobile armor mode next to her Slaughter Dagger. "I thought the Savior was supposed to be red! You know, like blood! Blood Knight! This is _so_ not cool."

Emily snapped her eyes back towards the front, just in time to take a beam rifle blast to the shield. Trojan slid in front of her and fired back with his rifle; Lily seized the chance to squeeze off a salvo of plasma cannon shots, and one of them ripped through the Windam up in front and tore it apart in a blaze of fire.

"I think you'll be okay," Emily said with a sigh. Two more Windams darted out from behind a piece of wreckage and pounded the three mobile suits with rifle fire, only for Trojan to whirl up into their ranks and tear one of them in two with his own rifle's saber blades. The second backed away and raised its rifle—but the Slaughter Dagger was there to kick it in the torso and then spear it through the chest on a beam rifle blast.

"There's more—" started Trojan.

"Lily, you go ahead and soften them up. You've got better mobility. Trojan, this machine is inferior to the Dom, so stick with me."

"Right."

Emily cast a quick, nervous glance over her shoulder, at the silent, oblong shape of Terminal behind her.

_Don't take too long in there, Selene..._

—

The GOUF Ignited was a fine machine, reflected Rau Le Creuset as he rode one into battle. Those heat rods were interesting weapons, and the superior handling and maneuverability meant undoubtedly that this thing was no ZAKU.

A Windam rose up from the wreckage, beam rifle blazing; Rau seized his chance and sent the left-hand heat rod lancing towards it. It wrapped around the Windam's arm, and Rau yanked the trapped machine closer—and with a quick slash, he chopped the Windam in two and stormed along on his way.

Beams from behind flashed around the GOUF and towards another approaching Windam. One of them hit home, blowing off the Windam's right arm at the shoulders, and then a white Murasame dropped down from nowhere to slash off its head and left arm with a beam saber.

Rau frowned. "Glittering Star J" was making the same mistake Kira made—and so Rau moved his GOUF in to slash the disabled Windam in half. Instantly, Jean Carrey's disapproving face appeared on one of the GOUF's monitors.

"Why did you do that? He was disabled!"

"But not destroyed," Rau shot back. The two mobile suits darted apart as a beam volley coursed through the battlefield. "Try to leave your naiveté behind, Mr. Carrey. This is a war zone."

"I hardly think it naïve to note that killing people just breeds more conflict."

The GOUF jinked to the side to avoid another Windam's beam rifle blast, and then charged forward to slash its rifle in two. The Windam backed away, supported by its three compatriots and forcing the GOUF on the defensive—but not before Rau ignited the left-hand heat rod and ripped it clear through the Windam's torso to destroy it.

Rau glanced distastefully up at Carrey's Murasame. "Then you still have much to learn."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Before we run the engine we're going to have to do a trial run," Abbey warned as the _Minerva_'s bridge sank down to combat status. Meyrin adjusted her cap and studied the tactical map on the auxiliary screen. The Alliance fleet's warships had settled for blasting apart the largest bits of debris, sending the mobile suits through the cracks, and relying on them to punch open holes in the enemy's defense. Oshida could always launch the _Alexandria_ directly into their faces—because probably nobody was expecting that—but one ship was not going to turn the tide. They would need the Vedlow Fleet for that, and Vedlow's ETA was still up in the air.

"A trial run would draw attention," Meyrin grumbled. "Tell Abes to run a second check of the engine. If there are any problems, he'll have to catch them. We can't afford to start the engines yet; not when we haven't finished repairs to the Tristans and Isolde."

Abbey settled into the seat at her station. "We haven't tested those out either. It won't do us any good to bust out and charge into the fight, only for our weapons to malfunction."

"Then Abes and his crew will have to fix them right the first time," Meyrin answered. "I'll leave it to him. Roxy, where are our mobile suits?"

"All somewhere in that melee. I can't pick them out myself."

Meyrin glanced back at the battle, and the bursts of fire bubbling up around Terminal.

_Don't any of you get killed out there..._

—

Sparks flew as the Justice and Raigo clashed, saber to saber. Athrun saw a chance and surged forward to throw the Raigo back—but before the white Gundam could respond, the Justice darted to the side, saber blazing, and ran it through the rifle of a second Hyperion G. He scanned the skies for the other two—

"Wait, that's only two of them! Where—?"

He jerked back the controls and snapped his attention over his shoulder, where he caught sight of an M1 Astray. It swung up its rifle and opened fire, but the blasts landed harmlessly against a Hyperion G's lightwave barrier—just in time for Viveka's GuAIZ to lunge out of nowhere and tear off the Hyperion's right arm with its beam claws.

"Viveka! Don't push too hard, the GuAIZ can't keep up!" He whipped back around to face the oncoming Raigo and deflected another saber strike. "Persistent little...!"

One of the Hyperion Gs whirled in from behind, beam machinegun coming up to finish the fight. Athrun twirled the Justice around, ignited one of the leg-mounted beam blades, and slashed the Hyperion G's rifle in two—and then went back on the defensive as the remaining mobile suits opened fire again.

"Dammit, Viveka, where are you? The GuAIZ is too old for that!" One of the Hyperion Gs came down from above with a beam saber in its hand. "What the—?" The Justice rocked as the Hyperion brought down its saber, and Athrun's eyes went wide as the Raigo lunged up from behind with its own saber ready.

"Now I'll finish this for good!" ND HE screamed—

"_Like hell!_"

The GuAIZ came barreling out of nowhere to slam the Raigo aside with its shoulder—but a moment later, another Hyperion G was there with its beam cannon ready. Viveka jammed the controls to the side, but not far enough. The Hyperion opened fire and the GuAIZ's left arm and left leg vanished in the blast.

"Viveka!" Athrun cried—

Viveka's voice came cackling through the speaker as the Hyperion closed in for the kill, beam saber lit. "I'm not done yet!"

Instead, the smoke blasted apart and the maimed GuAIZ leveled off its rifle and drilled a blast straight through the Hyperion's cockpit. The two mobile suits were engulfed in a thundering explosion, and Athrun felt his heart skip a beat as the maimed, blackened GuAIZ went sailing out of the flames, into the arms of one of Terminal's mobile suits.

"You, take her back to base!" Athrun shouted, and then whirled around to face the Raigo's furious attack. "Viveka, answer me, are you alright?"

"K-Kinda," she grunted, and Athrun ground his teeth at the sight of blood drifting around her in the GuAIZ's battered cockpit. "Some shrapnel got me. It's not gonna kill me, but you're on your own now, Zala."

Athrun turned his eyes back towards the charging Raigo. "That's how I work best."

—

"Where the hell is that fleet?" Sting screamed, as the Duel Dagger twisted around enemy fire and pounded off a salvo of its own shoulder cannon shells. The projectiles pounded against the shields of a Windam squad up ahead, but a Doppelhorn Windam among their ranks lunged up over the smoke and answered with a blast of its own to throw the Duel Dagger back. "Dammit! This thing's too slow!"

One of the Windams lanced up from below, beam saber held high, and claimed the Dagger's right arm at the elbow. Sting jetted backwards and let loose a cloud of missiles in the Windam's face to blow it apart—only for another Windam to streak down from above and slice off the Dagger's left leg at the knee with its saber.

"Oakley! Three o'clock!" Courtney's voice screamed. Sting shot his eyes to the right, just as another Windam opened fire and blew off what was left of the Dagger's right arm.

"Goddammit!" Two more Windams appeared, rifles leveled off, and the three Windams took aim. "I don't think so—!"

The Windams opened fire, and Sting smashed his hand down on one of the switches. With a burst of steam, the Duel Dagger's Fortrestra armor broke off in a cloud around the Dagger itself—and Sting jammed back the controls just as the Windams' beams sliced through the armor pieces and blew them apart.

With a scream, Sting charged out of the smoke and drove his saber into the leading Windam's cockpit. The remaining two darted to the sides and one of them hurled a Stiletto anti-armor penetrator down towards him. Sting's eyes went wide and he pulled back the control stick hard—the penetrator jammed itself into the Dagger's left shoulder and detonated, blowing off the arm, and the world went dark for Sting Oakley.

A red beam coursed through the battlefield and blew one of the Windams apart, followed by the darting gunbarrels of the Proto Chaos to pick off the other, and Auel's Gunner ZAKU landed next to the mutilated Dagger. "Sting, damn you, if you die in there I'll kick your ass!" The ZAKU turned its monoeye towards another Windam team on the approach, and it reared back and kicked the Dagger in the other direction. "Hayden! Get Sting back to Terminal!"

"Right!" answered Hayden, and his Aile Windam dropped in to catch the damaged machine and took off towards the fortress.

"Don't let your anger cloud your judgment, Neider," Courtney warned. "These men were well-trained."

Auel snarled in fury as he watched the enemies open fire. "Fuckers don't know what they're dealing with!"

—

With an ear-splitting shriek, the Destiny plunged its anti-ship sword through one of the Windams and let it explode in a fiery flash. Three more lined up for a beam rifle barrage, with a Buster Dagger between them; Shinn darted up above, blinding them all with a flurry of afterimages, and before either could react he stormed into the center of their formation and slashed the right-hand Windam in half. The Buster Dagger jetted backward and pounded the Destiny with a point-blank gunlauncher blast to throw the Gundam back; the Windams followed it up with a barrage of beam rifle blasts that sliced through the afterimages.

Shinn glanced over his shoulder. "Riika, now!"

A tower of fire rose up from behind one of the ruins and a hail of missiles came streaking down out of the black sky, blowing one of the Windams apart. The Buster Dagger jerked to the side, switched its rifle, and fired the high energy cannon into the wreckage—but too late, as the Destiny rushed in to chop it in half. Riika's ZAKU Phantom roared out of hiding and pounded the two Windams' shields with beam blasts—just in time for another shot to come streaking out of nowhere and slam through the right-hand Windam's cockpit. And as that one exploded, Shinn shot down upon the last and ripped it in half with his sword.

"Stella's a pretty good shot," breathed Riika, while her ZAKU searched the battlefield. "Shinn, Doppelhorns, up there!"

"I see them. You have any missiles left?"

"One round per tube. You want me to hide again?"

Up ahead, a quartet of Doppelhorn Windams opened fire and blasted the surrounding wreckage to bits. Shinn threw himself in between the Windams and Riika, deflecting wreckage and shells with his beam shield—but that was all the chance needed for a quartet of Buster Daggers and a quartet of standard Windams to leap out from their own hiding places and rocket over the two mobile suits' heads. And an instant later, Shinn felt his heart stop as an entire Euclid mobile armor wrenched itself from the debris and rocketed after them.

"What the hell?" Riika cried. "How did they—?"

"Incoming!" Shinn shouted, and with a crash he slammed the ZAKU back behind another piece of debris and took off, while the Windams showered him with beam and artillery fire. "Shit! Terminal, heads up, you've got eight mobile suits and a Euclid on approach!"

One of the operators' eyes went wide in disbelief. "They got past you?"

"I guess my godlike skills are getting rusty." Shinn looked frantically for an opening in the enemy lines. "Riika, I've got to take out that Euclid, can you handle these guys?"

Missiles and shells pounded into the ZAKU's shields. "Does it look like I can handle these guys?"

Shinn ground his teeth and charged. _I don't have time for this bullshit!_

—

"That pressure," Rau started, and his GOUF stopped short with its beam sword blazing, its monoeye darting back and forth. "Someone's coming."

Nearby, Carrey's Murasame ducked around a Windam's desperate fire and promptly beheaded it with its saber. "What are you talking about—"

Carrey fell silent as a wave of beam fire slashed through space around him and forced him on the defensive. Rau sent his GOUF into a steep dive and then yanked back on the controls as a mobile suit shot by.

"Is that—?" started Carrey.

A lone Windam with an orange backpack whipped around to face the GOUF and Murasame, and Rau Le Creuset scowled as the gunbarrels slammed down onto the mobile suit and he recognized the emblem and pressure before him.

"The Moonlight Mad Dog, Morgan Chevalier."

Inside the Windam, Morgan sized up his opponents—the great Glittering Star J and a GOUF, from which was emanating the telltale pressure of a Newtype. Morgan winced at the feeling and tried to gauge which one was the greater threat—but they denied him the opportunity, with the Murasame snapping up its beam rifle to open fire. He eagerly took off around the blasts and launched his gunbarrels again. "Well, I guess you're first, Mr. Carrey. Disable _this!_"

Two of the gunbarrels closed in and forced Carrey on the defensive—but Rau charged forward, beam sword blazing, and wove his way through fire from the other two gunbarrels. Morgan swapped out his rifle for a saber and swung it up just as the GOUF brought down its sword, stopping the blow cold.

In the GOUF's cockpit, Rau smirked. "As expected from the likes of you, Moonlight Mad Dog!"

Morgan blinked in surprise. "Rau Le Creuset? The White Knight of ZAFT?" The GOUF surged forward and forced the Windam on the defensive, long enough for the Murasame to come charging in with a beam rifle barrage. "So you survived the Junius War after all!"

"Destiny does not have in store for me so pedestrian a fate!" cackled Rau as he whirled in for another attack.

"Your choice disappoints me, Morgan," Carrey added, as his Murasame drew a beam saber. "I thought your conscience was stronger than that!"

Morgan grinned and warded them both off with a burst from his gunbarrels. "It's a regular ace pilot reunion here," he chuckled. "Come on, you two! Show me what you can do!"

—

Emily yelped in surprise as the battlefield split in two and a pair of pulsing beam blasts went barreling by. She snapped her attention towards their source and watched with a sinking heart as the Windams up ahead moved aside—making room for a Euclid mobile armor to come charging towards the fortress.

"Well, shit," Trojan said. "I didn't know they'd brought one of _those_." His DOM's monoeye flicked towards the Slaughter Dagger. "Hey Emily, you're our ace here—"

"What about me?" Lily yelled.

"Not the time for that," interrupted Emily. "It has a positron reflector. You'll have to get close. Don't let it get past you or it'll have a clear shot at Terminal."

The three mobile suits charged forward, beam rifles blazing, and the Euclid immediately activated its positron reflector to shrug off the attacks. Trojan charged in with a scream, beam sabers on the end of his rifle ignited, and brought the blades down towards the Euclid's gray armor—but the huge mobile armor darted to the side with unnatural speed and avoided the attack.

"What the—?" Trojan started, and then cut himself off as the Windams behind the mobile armor opened fire and pounded his beam shield. "How can it move that fast?"

Emily floored the Dagger's booster and switched to a saber of her own. "As long as you can get close—!"

The Euclid stopped short, ticked its nose up, and let loose a pulsing wave of beam fire. Emily jammed the controls to the right and barely avoided the blasts, at the cost of her Dagger's right leg, which vanished in a burst of fire.

"Emily!" Lily shouted; the Dagger shuddered as Lily's Vent Savior seized it by the shoulder and hurled it clear of the Euclid's next attack. The white Gundam whirled around and slammed a plasma cannon volley into the Euclid's armor, and Lily groaned in frustration as the shots landed against a shimmering barrier instead. "Jeez, I take the mobile suit with all the cannons and I have to fight _this_ thing with it!"

Emily's eyes lit up. "Trojan, solid shells! You brought the DOM's Gigalauncher, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but solid shells won't punch through—"

"It doesn't matter, just knock it around and distract the pilot so one of us can get close!" The Dagger took off as the Windams moved in from behind, and the Euclid righted itself and started back towards the fortress. "Oh no you don't!"

Trojan's DOM swept in with the Gigalauncher in its left hand and fired off three bazooka shells before the Windams forced him back. The shells slammed into the Euclid's reflector, knocking it off course and throwing up a pall of smoke around its armor. Emily lunged up in the Dagger, saber drawn, and went charging back down with a scream—

Instead, the smoke parted, the Euclid jetted back, and the Dagger's saber caught nothing. Emily shot her eyes back up towards her opponent and jammed back the controls—just in time for the Euclid to open fire and blow off the Dagger's right arm.

Through the smoke, what was left of the Dagger charged forward and Emily fixed her foe with a scowl. "You think that's going to stop me?"

The Euclid fired again, but the Dagger spiraled beneath its shots and then lunged upward again. Driven back, the mobile armor angled its guns up to fire and the Windams swept in for support—but the Vent Savior pummeled it with a salvo of plasma shots, and Emily came down with a scream to plunge her saber through the Euclid's cockpit and rip the mobile armor open.

"Lily, now!" The Dagger lunged off the Euclid's shattered armor, and from behind her the Vent Savior tore the Euclid in two with a furious blast of plasma. Emily watched carefully as the Windams pulled back, shielding themselves from the Euclid's fiery death.

A bolt of white energy split the air in front of her and she jammed the controls to the side—just in time for a wave of green beam energy to blow off the Dagger's left arm. The mobile suit's Aile Striker exploded in a blaze that threw Emily forward in her seat, slamming her head into the console before her.

"_Emily!_" Trojan shouted—he snapped his eyes forward and stared in disbelief as two more Euclid units came roaring into the fight. "What the hell? More of them!"

Up above, Lily wailed in surprise as the Vent Savior ducked aside from a furious beam rifle barrage from the Windams. "Where did _that_ thing come from?"

Trojan felt his stomach tighten. "No way...they threw out that first one to distract us and wear us down, so the other two could move in! It was a sacrificial lamb!"

The second Euclid leveled off its guns for a lethal second salvo, but an instant later the Vent Savior appeared from above to pour firepower into the Euclid's dorsal surface, just long enough for Trojan's DOM to swoop in, seize the mutilated Dagger, and make a speedy retreat. Lily jacked the Vent Savior backward to avoid fire from the third Euclid.

"Get her out of here!" Lily shouted.

Trojan frantically keyed in the frequency to contact the Dagger. "Emily, answer me! Are you alright?"

In the Dagger's smoky cockpit, Emily sat up painfully and then spared a nervous glance down towards the shards of glass and drops of blood floating around her head. She gently pulled off her helmet and hissed at the pain as her hair flopped free. The cuts on her forehead where blood was trickling down her face didn't seem deep, at least, and she probably would have smashed her skull open without that helmet—but that didn't make it nicer to look at or think about.

She looked up towards Terminal. Her Dagger was out of commission, but that wasn't the end of _that_.

"Well, that could have gone better," Emily grunted. She glanced towards the shattered auxiliary screen and smiled reassuringly at Trojan. "Sorry 'bout that." She changed the frequency and held a hand to her head. "Lily, I'm heading back to Terminal for a minute. Are you gonna be alright on your own?"

"Yeah," she answered, "but don't take too long."

"I thought you were the Blood Knight of Outer Space."

Instantly, Lily perked up. "That sounds like a challenge!"

"It is. Hold off those enemies until we get back and I'll think of something cool for you." Lily sailed off into battle with a cackle, and Emily looked back up towards Trojan's DOM. "I'm going to find Selene and take out the Eclipse."

"Eclipse?"

"Gabriel. I renamed it."

"I didn't know you could do that."

"It's my Gundam, I'll call it what I want." She touched the side of her head and winced; the cuts would just have to wait.

"What if they aren't done with the adjustments yet?"

Emily glanced over her shoulder at Lily, still battling the Alliance forces—and still fending off those Euclids with waves of beam cannon fire. "They'll have to be."

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Agamemnon**_**-class carrier **_**Henry Clay**_

"Euclid unit Romeo 1 has been destroyed," the operator called out. "Romeo 2 and Romeo 3 have engaged the enemy."

Vice Admiral Mathis sat back uncomfortably in his command chair. The _Minerva_'s mobile suit contingent had been largely destroyed in previous battles, but intelligence was not as confident about the loss of its pilots, and Mathis would take no chances. It was a disquieting way to use his valuable mobile armor units, having one go in to absorb the brunt of attacks by any of those skilled pilots and sending in another two to launch an overwhelming counterattack.

He studied the tactical map and watched the Resistance's defense line around Terminal steadily shrink. They did not have sufficient forces to hold out against his own, not for much longer—but he still felt restless.

No, he had not caught them by surprise, and he could not yet say confidently that they had no other tricks up their sleeve. The _Minerva_ itself had yet to be found, after all, and they had a way of forcing open the jaws of defeat and finding victory within.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Debris Belt**

Ivan Danilov studied the scene before him. Flashes of light flickered up from somewhere in the Debris Belt, poking out around the wreckage, but if the tactical map was any indication, the battle was going well for Admiral Mathis. Perhaps the _Charlemagne_'s presence would not be—

"Heat sources, captain!" the sensor officer cried, and a moment later the _Charlemagne_ rattled as missiles came streaking out of the wreckage. Danilov looked up in disbelief.

"CIWS, respond! Jason, find the sources, now! Ronald, weapons on standby!"

Immediately, the bridge rattled as missiles and beams slammed into the _Charlemagne_'s hull—and a moment later, space in front of the bridge flickered and three N Dagger Ns materialized and rocketed away to safety.

"_N Daggers?_" Vera exclaimed. "How the hell did the Resistance get _those?_"

Danilov's eyes searched the space before his ship, and they went wide in disbelief as he caught sight of no less than ten warships rising from the debris. "Ronald, target those warships! It's an enemy combat fleet! Open fire!"

The _Charlemagne_ quaked as its Gottfried cannons opened fire—but the blasts dissipated a moment later and for the first time, Danilov noticed a strange tint to the area surrounding the fleet. He felt his heart stop.

"Our blasts were stopped cold, sir," Ronald answered from the weapons console. "Enemy warships seem to have released anti-beam depth charges."

"The Valiants, then! Target the enemy fleet!" shouted Vera.

"Impossible, control circuits have been disabled!"

"Then send out our mobile suits," Danilov ordered—

"The catapults aren't responding, sir!" Sheila exclaimed from the MS deck console. "We'll have to open the doors manually, and by then..."

"Then, Connie," Danilov went on with a growl, "get us a line to Admiral Mathis. Tell him that the Vedlow Fleet is coming up on his position from the rear."

"Sir, the communication channels aren't responding!" Connie protested. "We're being jammed!"

"Jammed?" Vera sputtered.

"Searching for the source of the interference now!"

Danilov stared ahead in disbelief, and the pieces came together in his mind. They had used those N Daggers to get close enough to launch a devastating surprise attack to disable his weapons and stymie his mobile suits, then covered their own escape with anti-beam depth charges, while jamming his communications somehow. That was the Vedlow Fleet; that was their professionalism and skill, disabling his mighty, unsuspecting battleship while they slipped into the fray at Terminal—from behind Mathis's position.

Danilov looked back towards the Vedlow Fleet, as they escaped.

—

Sparks flew and Athrun Zala felt his teeth rattle as the Raigo Gundam slammed its saber down hard onto the Infinite Justice's blade. Athrun surged back with sheer thruster power, but the Raigo slammed a knee into the Justice's torso and sent it reeling, and then followed it up with a powerful kick to the head. Athrun shook his head, recollected his wits, and jabbed his saber forward to spoil the Raigo's finishing blow.

"It's like fighting Kira!" he snarled. The Raigo backed away and darted up, angling to come down behind the Justice; Athrun whirled around, batted the Raigo's saber aside, and brought down his own blade—but the Raigo thrust its shield into the path to spoil the blow. "Dammit! He's reading my moves!"

Inside the Raigo, ND HE tightened his fists around the Raigo's control sticks and tried to control his breathing. That green robot bird fluttered by in his mind's eye.

"Get out of my head," he growled. "_Get out of my head!_" The Raigo roared forward and threw the Justice back. "I don't remember you! I'm not who you say I am! You have no idea who I am!"

Athrun glowered up at his oncoming foe, the twisted, distorted pressure pummeling him from all sides. "It's bad enough what Valentine and Rau did to the real Kira," he grunted, "but for you to come before me too...!"

The Raigo brought its saber down; Athrun swung back with a scream to stop it cold.

ND HE trembled with rage. "Quit doing this to me!" he screamed. "_Quit messing with my mind!_"

—

"Auel, missiles, nine o'clock!" Hayden cried. Auel snapped his eyes to the left.

"How the fuck did they—?" He cut himself off, hurled a grenade, and backed away as the blasts flashed up in front of him. A lone Windam lunged up over the flames, beam rifle leveled off, and squeezed off a shot—it landed hard against the ZAKU's shield and drove it back. A gunbarrel from the Proto Chaos shot it down—but then another Windam ducked past its comrade's fiery end, whipped up its own rifle, and fired a shot of its own to cleanly sever the ZAKU's left arm at the shoulder.

"Auel, pull back!" Hayden shouted; his Aile Windam dropped in before the ZAKU to kick the enemy Windam back and then spear it through the cockpit on a beam rifle shot.

Auel shook his head and glowered up at the oncoming enemies. "Those bastards took out Sting," he shot back. "I'm not letting them—"

"Neider, _move!_" Courtney roared.

Too late, Auel turned towards the front and instinctively pulled back the controls as three Windams opened fire with bazookas and ruthlessly pummeled the Gunner ZAKU Warrior. Auel screamed in pain as shrapnel filled the cockpit and all went dark.

The Proto Chaos swarmed its gunbarrels into the enemy's ranks and picked off two of them, forcing the survivor back. Courtney hissed a curse and glanced over at Hayden's Windam. "Hayden, return him to base. I will cover you."

As Hayden's Windam moved in to seize the maimed ZAKU, Courtney glowered back at the enemy. Without their Gundams, the _Minerva_'s pilots just couldn't keep up.

—

The lights flooded the empty hangar as Emily and Trojan touched down on the gantry in front of the mutilated Slaughter Dagger. Emily gingerly touched her head again—still hurting, but she would have to just get over that. Trojan glanced at her nervously.

"You must have a concussion," he started. "If you hit that console hard enough to break the visor on your helmet—"

"I'll be fine," Emily waved him off. "I'll worry about it later." Together they headed down the gantry, to the next hangar over.

Selene was there waiting for them, and gasped the instant she laid eyes on Emily. "What happened to you? I've been trying to contact you for five minutes, I thought you'd been killed!"

Emily touched the tips of two fingers to her forehead and eyed the blood carefully. "Just some brain cells."

"Come here, that looks pretty bad—"

"It's just cuts from broken glass," Emily said quickly, "and I'll worry about them when there aren't two mobile armors out there approaching Terminal." She turned her eyes towards the dark shape at the rear of the hangar. "Is the Gundam done?"

Selene adjusted her lab coat. "As done as it'll get. The heat rod and beam launcher aren't finished yet, but the Voiture Lumiere should operate stably and you'll have the Hamavet." She looked back at Emily. "The G-forces are going to be strong. Are you sure you're up to this?"

Emily merely shrugged. "We don't have any other choice. You should get to a shelter, I'm going to go."

As Selene reluctantly drifted down the gantry towards the hangar's exit doors, Emily turned towards Trojan, hating the feeling rippling off of his presence. It sent her mind reeling back to Isaac, to the last boy she had met with these stupid _feelings_ that caused so much trouble. But they couldn't be helped. She told herself that it was just inviting heartbreak to care—but that never stopped it, and the fear of what bad things could happen overshadowed the possibilities of everything else.

"Listen," she said, "when we get back out there, don't try to keep up with me. You won't be able to and you'll just get yourself killed."

Trojan frowned. "I'm not going to just hide while you go fight all alone."

"You aren't gonna have a choice. There is no way the DOM can keep up with the Eclipse. Not a chance." She paused and searched for words that wouldn't have unwanted implications. "And I don't want you doing anything stupid."

"Alright," he conceded, "but if you need me..."

"The Eclipse can handle it."

Trojan glanced over awkwardly at the silent mobile suit. Emily studied his face for a moment, turning over the feeling of hurt and disappointment churning around him, and her mind went back to Isaac. He had thrown himself into a fight he had no chance of winning, to protect a girl he had awkwardly pursued at Carpentaria and in which he had sparked no interest. He still didn't—not in that way, at least—but Trojan was different. Maybe he was no more important or serious than Isaac, and maybe her own feelings were no different—but now...

_She will be our angel of death_, the voice reminded her.

Emily pursed her lips. _Your angel of death wouldn't do _this, she shot back.

"Trojan?" she asked as he turned away. He looked back at her—and she stepped forward, lifted up his chin, and kissed him. "I mean it," she whispered as she pulled away. "Don't do anything stupid."

"U-Um, okay," Trojan sputtered. Emily smiled at his bright red face as he stumbled around and headed for the hangar exit. Viveka was right; boys were funny.

Her smile faded as she pushed off the railing and ducked into the Eclipse's open hatch. As the Gundam came online and she folded down the cockpit console, she frowned at the startup screen proudly announcing its name—another thing she'd have to change. The Gundam rumbled and began to descend, taking a lift down towards a catapult, and an operator's face appeared on the auxiliary screen.

"There you are," she sighed in relief. "About time you launched. This is docking control. We're ready when you are."

"Understood," Emily answered as she strapped herself in and glanced around the cockpit—far sleeker and closer than the Twilight's cockpit, with far more of its panoramic screen visible around the consoles. "What's the situation with those Euclid units?"

"Bad. That white mobile suit is still holding them off, but they've taken out fifteen other mobile suits that went to help."

Emily smiled. _I guess I owe Lily something_. "Then I'm going. Activate the catapult." The Eclipse stomped forward and locked itself into the catapult, and Emily peered up ahead.

"Shit!" someone on the operator's end cried. "Four Windams and one of those Euclids have broken through! They're heading for Catapult Six!"

"That's the one with the new model!" the operator cried, and turned back towards her screen. "Look, you gotta—"

"Emily, Eclipse, _launching!_"

The catapult fired, the lights flashed to life, and the Gundam Eclipse roared into battle.

Up ahead, the four Windams broke formation around the Euclid—but the one at the formation's top reared up in surprise as the Eclipse burst into the space before it, slammed both its clawed hands into the cockpit, and tore the entire mobile suit in two. Emily grunted at the force—Selene hadn't been kidding about the G-forces.

She whipped around as the beams flashed around her and darted down towards the next Windam, to rip it in two with a palm cannon blow. The third Windam rushed in from behind, using the Euclid as cover—but the Eclipse whipped and flung its arm out. A panel on the inside of the arm slid open and a clawed anchor blasted its way out of the arm and embedded itself in the Windam's cockpit, and with a shout, Emily pulled the anchor back and impaled the Windam through the chest with her mobile suit's left hand. She flung the sparking Windam's remains away and put herself between the Euclid and Terminal.

"What _is_ that thing?" the remaining Windam pilot exclaimed. "Is that the Twilight?"

"No," the Euclid's pilot answered, "that's a new model!"

The Eclipse descended with a flash upon the Windam and blasted clear through its torso with a palm cannon strike, and then whirled around to face the Euclid. The gray mobile armor opened fire with its beam cannons, and Emily flicked her eyes to the right as the second one came streaking in as well.

"Sorry!" Lily's voice. "They got past—holy crap, is that the new Gundam?"

Emily ground her teeth as the mobile armors lined up to open fire. _Four Windams and two Euclids as your first prey, Eclipse. That's not too bad._

With a blast of afterimages, the Eclipse activated its beam wings and rocketed upward to let the Euclids' shots sear by underneath. They both pulled up and poured beam fire after her, but the afterimages flared and blazed through the black sky, and Emily raised a hand up to the hilt of her mobile suit's new close-combat weapon. One of the Euclids nosed up after her, beam cannons blazing, and it launched off a barrage of missiles from its rear section—

Emily seized her chance, charged forward with a scream, and drew the Eclipse's beam sword. The green shimmering beam flashed to life in her hands, and with a triumphant shout she plunged down through the Euclid's fire, dipped the blade down into the Euclid's armor, and then flicked her wrist up to rip a gaping hole in the Euclid's hull. And then, with an ear-splitting screech, she drove the Eclipse's left hand deep into the wound and poured fire from the palm cannon into the Euclid's insides. The second Euclid came down with a crash to rescue its comrade—but Emily lunged back and kicked the dead machine's nose, forcing it upward to smack into the second mobile armor. The first one belched sparks and exploded, sending the second one reeling, and Emily saw her chance—

"And now for you!"

The Eclipse was there in a heartbeat, beam sword raised high, and Emily brought it down with a scream to slash off the mobile armor's left-hand beam cannon and engine. The Euclid shuddered under the blow, and Emily's eyes darted up towards the Vent Savior—

"Lily, now!"

Lily wasted no time in lining up a beam cannon barrage through the Euclid's gaping new hole, and both mobile suits backed away as the mobile armor staggered forward and exploded.

"Th-That's the Eclipse?" Lily cried. "That thing is a monster!"

Trojan's green DOM dropped in from above. "Emily, are you alright in there?"

In the Eclipse's humming cockpit, Emily scanned the battlefield. There was a strange point of pressure out there, and there was still that fleet to deal with. The Eclipse could do it. Selene had told her about this power, this power that would end this war. Now it was hers—and now it would claim its dues.

"You two stay here," she said. "I've got work to do."

Before they could protest, the Eclipse flashed its eyes and took off.

—

Rau Le Creuset felt the change immediately, even as his beam sword blazed against the beam saber held by the Moonlight Mad Dog's Windam. Emily was out here now, and she had the Eclipse, and now the world would see what the Angel of Death could really do.

In his Windam, Morgan blinked in surprise and glanced in the direction of the pressure buzzing persistently against his mind. It was the mark of a Newtype—a different one, one as strong as Rau Le Creuset before him, if not stronger.

"I-Incredible..."

Morgan brought the gunbarrels in around him to force back the GOUF. Carrey's Murasame came in from behind, beam saber at the ready—but Morgan activated the Gunbarrel Striker's Gatling gun to force back the incoming foe, and with a flash he rocketed above both mobile suits, recalled his gunbarrels, and stormed off into the darkness.

"Where is he going?" Carrey began, but Rau cut him off with a laugh.

"Our little angel has come out to play!" he cackled. "I am _not_ going to miss _this!_"

The GOUF's monoeye lit up as it pursued with a burst of exhaust.

—

Another beam blast drilled its way through the cockpit of an incoming Windam, and Shinn backed away under a barrage of beam rifle blasts. Up ahead, another squad of Windams charged—with two Buster Daggers behind them, rising above their comrades to fire their high energy cannons and aiming for Terminal. Shinn grunted as the blasts landed against his beam shield.

"Shinn, there's not much I can do here without reloading or something," Riika warned. "And they're getting awfully close to Stella's position."

A white bolt danced through the air in front of him, and Shinn glanced to his right—just in time to catch a flash of sky-blue light whirling through the debris and leaving fiery puffs in its wake. And in the distance, far behind it, he could see another handful of lights—moving in from behind the Alliance fleet.

"Is that Emily and Aoma...?" he started.

"Did she finally launch?" asked Riika. "What's been taking her so long?"

Shinn looked back towards the enemy and shouldered Riika's ZAKU to the side. "No complaining now," he growled, "the tide's about to turn!"

—

Emily felt her muscles tense as she caught the pressure again—coming towards her. Up ahead was a Windam in dark green and white, with an orange backpack—a backpack that fired off four gunbarrels, and a moment later they all opened fire around the Eclipse and put her on the defensive.

"There you are," she breathed. "You must be some kind of ace or something."

The Windam poured fire after the Eclipse, even as its afterimages filled the sky. Emily rocketed around the Windam and came down her beam sword raised—the Windam whirled around and backed away, in time to avoid the sword but not in time to save its rifle. It abandoned the ruined weapon, drew a beam saber, and charged—and Emily jammed her sword into the saber's path to stop the blow.

"Well, well, well," a gruff man's voice echoed through the Eclipse's cockpit, "you're that Angel of Death character I've heard so much about, aren't you?"

Emily felt her right eye twitch in annoyance. "Maybe."

"Feeling cheeky today, are we?" chuckled Morgan Chevalier. "Let's see how you feel after _this!_"

The gunbarrels came to life and swarmed like animals around the Eclipse. Emily let out her breath and let her instinct take over, and the Eclipse wove a path through the fire and rocketed upward, the gunbarrels in hot pursuit. An instant later, she whirled around, sword blazing, and sliced one of them in two.

"Not bad!" roared Morgan, and with a crash he came down from behind with his saber. Emily whipped around to smack the Windam aside with her sword, and then jetted to the right as another gunbarrel darted out from behind Morgan to open fire. A third leapt up behind her—she whirled around and cut it in two, just as the fourth lined up to fire and barely missed the Eclipse's head.

"It'll take more than that!" Emily growled.

"Oh, it will, will it?" Morgan laughed. "Let's just see—!"

The Windam charged and slammed its saber against the Eclipse's beam sword, hard enough to knock it backward—and then darted back up, as more beam blasts sliced through around the black Gundam. Emily lunged up over the shots and then rocketed aside to dodge fire from the two remaining gunbarrels—

Instead, the white bolt was there to show her danger, and she threw the Eclipse down just in time to avoid a blue object with two pink beam sabers stretching off its front, barreling by. Suddenly the black sky was alive with beam fire, and Emily caught sight of another shape, a blue mobile armor—but no pilot inside.

"What is that thing?" she shouted.

Morgan smirked. "That receptor in the Exus is running well." His Windam rushed in, beam saber held high. "It's like having a whole second Gunbarrel Striker, isn't it?"

Emily scowled as the beams closed in and two of the gunbarrels sprouted beam blades and charged. She danced around the attacks, only for the Windam to lunge into her face with a saber strike her beam sword barely deflected.

"This is it, kid!" Morgan cried victoriously, and two of the blue Exus unit's gunbarrels came streaking in, beam blades ignited—

The seed fell before Emily's eyes, and with a crash she seized the Windam's shoulder, tossed it around her own mobile suit, and threw it into the gunbarrels' path. Morgan yelped in surprise and redirected them—only for the Eclipse to cut one of them in half.

"Enough of this!" Emily shouted. "Let's see what this Voiture Lumiere can do!"

She threw the switch, the backpack binders opened up, and a blinding flash of light poured forth from the two binders on the Eclipse's back. The beam blades shone to life with greater intensity than before, and Morgan stared in disbelief as the Eclipse blasted off around the battlefield, afterimages blazing.

"What—how the—where did she get that from?"

In an instant, the Gunbarrel Striker's remaining gunbarrels were slashed in two and exploding, and Morgan went back on the defensive with the Exus and its remaining three—no, two gunbarrels. The last two activated their beam blades and charged at the blindingly-fast Eclipse. Emily punched the controls to the side, jerking the Eclipse to the right and letting its sword saw through the incoming gunbarrel. The last one darted to the side, beam cannons extended—only for the Eclipse to fire its anchor into the machine's armor, and then with a crash she swung it like a hammer towards the Windam itself, crashing against its shield.

"How did you get so fast all of the sudden?" Morgan exclaimed.

The Exus itself came in, beam cannons blazing, and Morgan lined up from behind to attack with his saber—but the Eclipse darted up underneath the Exus and ripped it in two with its beam saber. Morgan reared back as the Eclipse returned, and with a crash it brought down its saber through the Windam's right shoulder and right knee.

"Dammit!" Morgan growled; with a crash he slammed the Eclipse in the face with his Windam's remaining knee, then backed away and released his entire payload of combat flares to cover his escape. His maimed Windam threw sparks and he scanned the battlefield for the nearest ship—that _Archangel_-class from the Phantom Pain, perhaps.

Back on the battlefield, Emily painfully rubbed her head and watched the Moonlight Mad Dog make his escape.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

The _Minerva_ spread its wings and rocketed out of its port, and the ship itself seemed to shudder with glee as it finally left port and returned to the battlefield where it belonged. On the bridge, Meyrin sat back with satisfaction. Once again the mechanics had fixed her mistakes—and this time she would not let them down.

"Chen, target the Tannhäuser on the enemy fleet's starboard wing and open fire. Try to catch two or three of those _Drake_ ships."

"Tannhäuser targeted," Chen answered.

Meyrin looked forward and savored the satisfaction rippling through her for a moment. For too long her ship had been on the defensive, spewing smoke and struggling to find friendly anchorage. Now it was time for that to change.

"Tannhäuser, _fire!_"

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Agamemnon**_**-class carrier **_**Henry Clay**_

"Admiral, the _Minerva_ has exited dock and opened fire on us! The _Meade_ has been destroyed outright!"

Admiral Mathis fought down the panic in his veins. "Detach five ships and their mobile suits to deal with them. Don't panic, they're only one ship and their Gundams are tied up!"

To the starboard side, as one of the _Nelson_-class battleships broke apart under the _Minerva_'s fire, another _Nelson_ and four _Drake_-class destroyers turned their bows towards the oncoming winged battleship. Mathis forcefully reminded himself that their Gundams were either gone or destroyed—and even that one new Gundam that was tearing up his men was focusing on defending the fortress, not attacking the fleet. So far—

Outside, the _Nelson_ at the head of the detachment suddenly cracked in two and exploded from enemy fire—from behind. Mathis's blood froze.

"Source on that enemy fire, now!"

"Searching..." The sensor officer's eyes went wide in disbelief. "Sir, ten enemy warships emerging behind us from the debris field!"

"_What?_"

"They're launching mobile suits! Contact lost with the _Vercingetorix!_ And—now we've lost the _Wavell!_ Admiral—!"

Mathis stared with an open mouth at the visuals on the auxiliary screen—of the handful of ships, launching mobile suits and tearing his fleet apart from the rear. Another ship exploded outside and the _Henry Clay_ rocked.

"Impossible...that's the Vedlow Fleet!"

He looked around the bridge of the _Henry Clay_ helplessly, and then turned his eyes towards the battlefield.

"Signal to all units," he said hoarsely, "full retreat, immediately!"

—

To be continued...


	13. Phase 13: The Father's Shadow

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 13 - The Father's Shadow

—

**April 28th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

In the humming cockpit of the Gundam Eclipse, Emily von Oldendorf had the restraints unhooked so she could hold her head in her hands and wait for it to stop pulsing like a subwoofer. Perhaps activating the Voiture Lumiere while concussed had not been the greatest idea in the world.

But it had _worked_, and now she had time to sit here and experience the worst headache she could ever remember having. The Alliance fleet was scrambling for distance and draining away into the Debris Belt, and that included that green and white Windam she had mutilated with the Eclipse's power.

"Emily?" someone asked, and she painfully glanced up at Trojan's face on the auxiliary screen. "Are you alright in there?"

"Something like that," Emily groaned, and slowly sat back. "What is it?"

"Terminal is getting ready to leave before the Alliance comes back. The _Minerva_ is going to do the same. Are you able to move the Eclipse yourself or should I move you?"

Emily put a hand over one of the controls. "I can do it," she mumbled, and quietly activated the thrusters to push her new machine back home. "How is everything? Where's Lily?"

"Here!" Lily exclaimed, and Emily immediately winced at the latest wave of pain ringing from her ears through the rest of her head.

"Hey Lily, ever had a concussion?" Trojan asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"She's got one. Pipe down." Lily put a hand over her mouth sheepishly as Trojan looked back towards the Eclipse. "Three of your pilots are injured, two of them badly, but I think they're all still alive." He shifted awkwardly in the DOM's cockpit seat. "The other one was your sister, I think."

Emily shot up in horror and then cringed in pain. "My...sister? What happened to her?"

"Shrapnel in the cockpit. Says she'll be alright, but I thought you'd want to know."

"Alright..." Emily slowly sat back and cracked an eye open so she could guide the Eclipse back towards the _Minerva_. "Trojan, I'm going to check the survival case for a painkiller. Take over for me?"

"Sure."

The Eclipse rattled as Trojan's DOM took the Eclipse's arm and carried it back home. Emily fished an aspirin tablet out of the survival case and swallowed it, and sat back to wait for the drug to filter into her system and take the edge off the pain. She would have to pay a visit to the infirmary herself later, to get those cuts on her head checked out.

In the meantime, Viveka forced her way into her thoughts, but Emily pushed down the fear and struggled to trust what Trojan had said.

—

"Sting and Auel are sedated," Abbey explained quietly on the bridge. "The doctor said their wounds aren't going to kill them, but they will unquestionably be out of action for a while. Viveka's wounds were less severe. Emily reported some light injuries of her own. Everyone else seems to be intact." She glanced towards Terminal, through the debris field that had become so much denser in the past few hours. "On our end, at least."

On the auxiliary screen, Oshida shrugged. "We will take as long as necessary to recover our wounded," he said, "but no longer. Terminal must relocate before the enemy can reestablish the scent. I gave you the contact information for who you need to meet at Copernicus. That's all I can do."

Meyrin frowned and tried not to feel too bad about the utter ruining of her plans to stay in dock and manufacture new Gundams using Terminal's facilities. Terminal just did not have the proper parts and resources to build seven more entirely new mobile suits. Those would have to be acquired elsewhere. "Do you have the DSSD survivors, including Ms. McGriff?"

Presently, the flash of green hair indicated Selene's presence in the Terminal control room. "Thank you, Captain Hawke. I hope the Gabriel performed to your satisfaction."

"I'm not the one you'd have to satisfy," Meyrin replied with a smile.

"You should be able to reach the Moon without incident," Oshida continued, "and in the meantime, we have the Vedlow Fleet to protect us. We will be fine." He offered a crisp salute. "Terminal, out."

The screen went dark and Meyrin took the chance to heave a sigh and bury her face in her hands. "That shoots my plans all to hell."

Abbey scratched the side of her head dejectedly. "There's a Resistance presence on the Moon, but meeting with _that_ guy..." She glanced up towards Roxy's station—and blinked in surprise at the sight of a far more melancholy Roxy Bannon than had been expected. "Miss Bannon, do you have any contacts on Copernicus?"

Roxy ran a hand through her hair and sat up. "Probably not. Copernicus is too upper-class for the people I rolled with."

"Then we'll just have to hope our contact is in a good mood," Meyrin interrupted, trying not to worry about Roxy. Once they got going, she could be released from her duties for a little while.

"And if he's not," Malik spoke up with a smirk, "we can sic Stella on him."

Everyone's stomachs turned at that idea. "Very funny, Malik," Meyrin said with a sigh. "Set course for Copernicus. We have an appointment to keep."

—

Athrun Zala was no stranger to dressing wounds, his own or someone else's—but he was certainly a stranger to dressing wounds on the body of an attractive woman. Viveka had managed to get a few nicks from flying shards of cockpit monitor just north of one of her shoulder blades, which meant she had pulled down the top half of her flight suit and Athrun was sincerely hoping he wouldn't have to take off her bra to bandage the cuts on her back—and all of that meant his face felt like it was the same color as her hair.

"Enjoying yourself back there?" she asked with what Athrun knew was a smug grin.

"You're gonna have a few more of these," he said, and tapped the long, two-pronged scar on her left side for emphasis. Ordinarily, eyepatch and mechanical arm aside, her athletic body, honed by years of combat and harsh training, would have caught many a man's eye—but then there were the injuries, and all those scars, and also the fact that she could crush a man's larynx in less than a second with her left hand. Seeing her like this, with beauty marred by ugly wounds and scars, he began to understand why she had fixated on him—on somebody who might return her affections despite the damage done to her body.

And, as he idly touched her left shoulder, where human flesh turned into a jumbled mass of scar tissue and then into a shaft of titanium, he felt guilty for having never done so.

Viveka flinched. "What, have you never been with a girl before?"

"N-No—well, I mean—sort of—"

"What does 'sort of' mean?"

Athrun took a step back and struggled for words. "I was supposed to be married—"

"Holy shit, really?"

"To Lacus Clyne."

"_Lacus Clyne?_ Then why the hell aren't you?"

"It's...um, a long story."

Viveka glanced over her shoulder and smirked. "Well, let me get dressed and you'll have to tell me."

—

The Moon.

It was drifting off in the distance, far beyond the densely-packed Debris Belt and the neglected colonies of Lagrange Point 1, where the wreckage of Arnhelm Colony was joining that great ring of space junk around the Earth. And for Rau Le Creuset, drifting on the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck and staring at the Earth's silvery, faithful satellite, it was the next stepping stone in his plans.

The Gabriel—no, the Eclipse, he reminded himself, such a fitting name—had performed wonderfully. With its Voiture Lumiere and Emily's skill and power, it had effortlessly torn apart two mobile armors and even made short work of the Moonlight Mad Dog himself. Selene had not been kidding; the Eclipse was a force of nature.

Rau frowned at the thought of Selene McGriff. She had thrown a brief bit of sand into the gears of his plan with her insistence to Emily that she use this power to end the war—to enter into Emily's mind the idea of a cause other than the one he would supply. But he was not worried or even annoyed, because there was another chance down the road. There always was, and it lay now with the inconstant moon.

Emily, after all, needed some reminding of who she really was. If that Trojan fellow and Lily, the Extended, were any indication, she was beginning to forget.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Ortega watched nervously as the yellow hull of one of the Space Force's _Cornelius_-class supply ships approached. The _Nathanael Greene_ was not the real source of his anxiety, however; the source was currently brooding in one of the passenger chairs on the bridge, arms crossed, a thoughtful frown on his jowly face.

"It's not a total loss," Colonel Joaquin said suddenly, making Ortega jump. "The battle, I mean. Mathis and Danilov's incompetence aside, we did get something out of it."

"What, sir?" asked Ortega.

Joaquin gestured towards the _Greene_. "They're bringing us two Exus mobile armors and parts for a new mobile suit," he grinned, "for our little guest."

Ortega shifted uncomfortably in the captain's chair. "What do you mean, sir?"

"I've scored a coup here, Ortega," Joaquin went on. "Not nearly as big as bagging Terminal and the _Minerva_, but it's a decent consolation prize. The Phantom Pain has been trying to entice Morgan Chevalier to transfer for months, years even. We would have just requisitioned him outright on our authority, but Space Force Command has been adamant, and so far President Djibril has not seen fit to challenge them on it." He stood up and waved at the _Greene_, as it opened its hangar bay doors and the first of those Exus units was pulled out by space-suited workers. "They say he's one of those 'Newtypes' or whatever. He's an ace pilot with a phenomenal reputation. He frequently travels to Volkov Crater to participate in mobile suit training exercises. But he's never been ours."

"And he still isn't, sir," Ortega pointed out quietly.

"Oh, not for long," Joaquin said with an upraised finger. "Captain Chevalier may wear the Space Force gray right now, but he'll be drafted soon enough. He's on a Phantom Pain ship now. He's going to be piloting a Phantom Pain mobile suit. And with the war ramping up against ZAFT and the Resistance, it will be easy to make the case that such a valuable soldier must join so elite an outfit as ours. And for the duration of his stay, he'll have to follow my orders anyway, thanks to Section 11 regulations, which means Command will get to see just what a fine Phantom Pain soldier he'll make." Joaquin chuckled to himself, and watched with crossed arms as the workers began moving the Exus towards the _Lucifer_'s waiting hangar. "Like I said, not a bad consolation prize."

Ortega squirmed and wondered what Captain Chevalier would think of that.

—

"You must be tired," the technician said in that soothing voice that made ND HE know he wasn't being taken seriously. "Get some rest first and we'll talk about it later."

ND HE laid his head down on the plushy maintenance bed surface and slowly removed his mask. He watched the nonreflective plastic close around him. His sanctuary sealed shut with a click.

It made no sense. He could not remember any time in his life where he'd met a blue-haired boy who gave him a green robot bird, and yet the feeling of familiarity with that man, the man that intelligence identified as Athrun Zala—it twisted and grew within him. He hated it. He hated this Athrun Zala person, for forcing these feelings and memories through him. Who was this man to alter his mind? Who was this man at all?

He flinched as another memory emerged. He saw it now, the stench of burning flesh and metal and gunpowder, the smoke swirling around him, the heat of flames clinging to his skin. He was standing on something—and there was that man again, in a red space suit, with a knife in his hand and combat web gear on his body—

ND HE turned over and groaned in pain. That man, Athrun Zala, charged at him with a knife—but stopped short when he recognized who he was attacking. A woman beneath him opened fire with a handgun, and ND HE looked down and recognized the cockpit hatch of the Atlantic Federation's old Strike Gundam. And that woman—

Who were these people? Why did he remember this? He knew what he was seeing. It was ZAFT's raid on Heliopolis, at the beginning of CE 71 during the Valentine War—but he had never been there. He had awoken four years later!

ND HE clutched at his head.

"What have you done to me, Athrun Zala?" He clenched his fists. "_What have you done to me?_"

—

There were many reasons Morgan Chevalier had assiduously avoided the Phantom Pain throughout his career. Colonel Joaquin, as it turned out, was one of them.

Morgan drifted through the _Lucifer_'s spacious hangar and watched as across the way, the ship's mechanics diligently assembled a mobile suit. It was said to capitalize on his "unique powers of spatial awareness" that allowed him to use the Gunbarrel Striker and the Exus to such effect. It was why there were two more purple Exus units waiting off to the port side, getting their receptor units installed. It was why the Phantom Pain was so interested in him.

And, he reflected ruefully, it was why he rebuffed their advances—until now. He was a soldier of the Alliance and would do his duty—but the Phantom Pain required far more than that, and Morgan was under no illusions as to what they would ask him to do. The military's official accounts of those attacks on Murmansk and Volgograd pinned them on the Resistance, but Morgan knew better. And now he was surrounded by Lord Djibril's black-shirted thugs.

They were supposed to be his allies, but he felt no camaraderie with these people. Not with the way they acted, the methods they used, the things they did.

And there was Colonel Joaquin. Morgan felt a scowl work its way onto his face. Colonel Joaquin, with that smug grin and that condescending attitude...and Morgan suspected that it was at Colonel Joaquin's direction that the _Lucifer_ had fired the fatal shot that had destroyed the Arnhelm Colony, in an attack Alliance officials were happy to blame on ZAFT and the Resistance.

He steeled himself as he watched his new mobile suit come together. The Space Force had fended off pressure to transfer him to the Phantom Pain, but now he was on their turf, and he would have to be careful.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

"What a disaster," sighed Ivan Danilov on the bridge as he scratched his head awkwardly. "Vera, status of repairs?"

"They'll be finished within the hour," she answered. "Fortunately the damage those Resistance troops inflicted was minimal."

"Just enough to leave us sitting helpless while Mathis's fleet got torn to shreds," Danilov grumbled. "We'll pick up the _Minerva_'s trail once the repairs are complete. Sensors, what's their projected heading?"

There was silence from the sensor console for a moment. "Projected heading will take them to the Moon, sir."

Vera frowned. "The Moon? We have dozens of installations there. What's going on?"

"Probably heading to Copernicus or one of the smaller lunar cities," Danilov guessed. "They only deployed one new mobile suit at Terminal, but I wouldn't put it past them to try to build more. The _Minerva_ isn't so tough without its stable of Gundams. And the Moon is riddled with Resistance operatives." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Although there was still..." He glanced at the sensor console again. "Eric, what about that ZAFT formation Intel told us about? The Z-400 one?"

Eric paused over his console for a moment and the tactical map lit up with a display of about a dozen ZAFT warships, all in the vicinity of the Moon. "No telling what their heading is yet, sir. They seem to be parked in lunar orbit."

Danilov frowned and studied the shapes on the screen—three _Nazca_-class destroyers, seven _Laurasia_-class frigates, a _Marseille III_-class freighter, and an _Eternal_-class cruiser. A respectable battle group by any means—but what were they doing there?

"Captain," Vera spoke up suddenly, "if the _Minerva_ engages those ZAFT units, what will we do?"

Danilov snorted in amusement. "Help them, of course. Go check on the repairs; we set out as soon as they're done."

—

The hangar noise had faded to a dull hum in the background as Grey Saiba idly worked in the Regen Duel's cockpit. At first he had been a miserable ball of tension, thinking that the _Charlemagne_ had been so effortlessly kept out of the battle at Terminal—but now the reports were coming in of that new Gundam, the one that the pilot had evidently called the "Eclipse." And once _those_ had come in, tension had given way to a feeling of intense discouragement. Grey vividly recalled getting his ass handed to him by Morgan Chevalier on the training grounds at Volkov Crater—and Morgan Chevalier had barely survived the incredible power of the Eclipse.

Grey looked up wearily at the cockpit hatch. Erin had been there for the past fifteen minutes at least, but she had said little—and judging by the troubled look on her face, she wasn't going to speak up anytime soon.

His conscience got the better of him. "What is it?" he asked, and Erin glanced at him in surprise.

"Nothing," she said quickly, and then stopped short, as though thinking better of it. "Just...well, you saw that footage of the enemy's new mobile suit, didn't you?"

"'course I did."

Erin blinked at him. "You're...not worried?"

"What's the point of worrying over something I can't control?" Grey asked back with a shrug. "We'll go out and fight and give it our best, and if we lose, we lose. Not much you can do about that."

At that, Erin blanched. "That's not what the instructors said at Volkov Crater—"

"That's because the instructors at Volkov Crater have no idea what combat is like." Grey waved a hand scornfully. "You can refine your techniques and whatever all you want, but in the end it just comes down to luck, and you can't control that. We've just been lucky—so far." He gestured across the hangar, to a spot occupied by a silent Dark Windam. "See that machine there?"

"Yes."

"Ensign Fuller used to park his mobile suit there. Ensign Fuller got blown away at Carpentaria by some Resistance mook. Merau and I survived. We were all Volkov graduates with high marks, so what's the difference? We were lucky, and Ensign Fuller wasn't."

"I didn't come here to just beat the odds—"

"Then what _did_ you come here for?"

Erin frowned and looked away awkwardly. "You wouldn't believe me."

"I wouldn't have believed a lot of shit I've wound up believing since I was assigned here."

"Then I'll just say I'm filthy rich." Grey arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "My father is the president of Cosmic Developments. They make space colony components. We're incredibly wealthy, and I stand to inherit it when my father dies."

"Then what are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "Getting away from all that." Grey blinked in surprise as she went on. "It's not as great as you think being a rich kid with powerful parents. Not when you've got your father expecting you to carry on the family name, and all this education to get done, and all kinds of limits on your social life, and being isolated."

Grey arched an eyebrow. "You joined the military to have a social life?"

"No," she said quietly, "I joined the military to have a _life_."

—

"The last time we did any lunar combat was at Volkov," Merau explained. Standing across from her on the gantry in front of the Nix Providence, Kelly Maynard nodded. "The simulators might help, but there's really no substitute for fighting in actual lunar gravity."

Kelly glanced up at the Nix Providence's white armor. "Captain Danilov expects that we'll be engaging ZAFT forces instead of the _Minerva_ anyway. There's been a ZAFT fleet hovering around the Moon for the better part of a week."

"That can't be good."

"No." Kelly crossed her arms. "We'll fight the _Minerva_ if we run across them, but if encounter those ZAFT units we'll have to put them over the _Minerva_."

Merau shifted uncomfortably. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend?"

"Something like that."

At that, Merau apprehensively turned her thoughts towards the _Minerva_, towards their glimmering Angel of Death, towards the quiet torment she had wreaked on Grey. The _Minerva_ had cost them so many friends and allies; how could they go into battle together, even with the mutual enemy of ZAFT before them?

"I'm sorry, lieutenant," she said suddenly. "The enemy of our enemy isn't exactly _my_ friend."

Kelly shook her head. "Not in this war."

—

**April 29th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt, en route to the Moon**

"She's still resting," Athrun said to Shinn as they glided down the _Minerva_'s corridors on pull-bars, "but at least the concussion was pretty minor. She should be back on her feet by tomorrow, in time for our arriving at Copernicus."

Shinn felt his stomach turn. The last time he had been to Copernicus had been four years ago...with George and Kika and the Mad Typhoon Gang. There had been a riot, Sting and Auel had tried to capture Stella, and the whole thing had been one more blow to what remained of his misconceptions about the world.

He shook his head. He had some kind of emotion wrapped up in all sorts of corners of the Earth Sphere. That would have to stop.

"We shouldn't have too much fighting to do at Copernicus," Shinn started. "I mean, aren't they neutral?"

"Political agreements change," replied Athrun. "They're still officially neutral and autonomous, but if the Alliance finds us there will be hell to pay. Our stay is an off-the-books kinda deal."

"I see." He frowned. "So that means we won't be using any facilities on Copernicus for manufacturing new mobile suits."

Athrun sighed. "There's two other options if that doesn't work out. We could go find Terminal again, and risk leading the Alliance to their location again; or we could go to Earth and link up with Gigafloat. They've got a small factory and a Junk Guild technical staff."

They both came to a stop at the hangar doors and filed through—and both came to a stop at the foot of the towering Gundam Eclipse.

"In the meantime," Athrun said grimly, "Emily will have to be our first line of defense."

Shinn glanced in the direction where he felt her cool, still presence, and hoped against his better judgment.

—

Without any thought toward politeness, Lily Thevalley shoved her face right up next to the glass of Stella's aquarium and peered determinedly through the plastic rocks. From underneath an overhang, a colorful fish stared back up indifferently.

"I didn't know you could keep fishes in zero-G," Lily cooed. "Don't they need gravity or something?"

Over Lily's shoulder, Stella shrugged. "No. But he gets confused sometimes," and she giggled at the thought.

"Weird!" Lily frowned as the fish made a cunning escape behind another rock. "How come you have a fish tank in here?"

"'cuz it's like the sea."

"Huh. I've never seen the sea."

Stella's small smile promptly vanished. "Stella will show you the sea...when the ship is back on Earth," she said with finality.

Lily glanced over her shoulder. "What's so special about it?"

"It's pretty," Stella said, "and..." She trailed off and Lily frowned, and opened her mouth to speak before Stella interrupted her. "And everything about it is the same." She held her hands wide apart. "It's really big but it's all the same. And there's animals in it, but none of them are special or something and they get to do what they want."

"I guess," Lily said, "but aren't there, like, sharks and stuff in the sea?"

"Yeah. They're scary, but," Stella remained undeterred, "they get to be what they wanna be."

—

Idiots just about got themselves killed.

Of course, as she sat in the infirmary watching Sting Oakley and Auel Neider sleep off surgery, Roxy knew somewhere in the back of her mind that feeling so shaken up about this was ridiculous. They were mobile suit pilots. Every time they launched there was a chance—mitigated by their skill and equipment but no less worth taking seriously—that something like this might happen, or worse. Hell, she was a bridge crew member, and something like this or worse could just as easily happen to her. This was all ridiculous, and somewhere in her rational mind, she knew that.

Which was why she'd brought the Wild Turkey with her. Nothing kept her rational mind nice and quiet like whiskey.

She had not yet imbibed enough to really drown out the voice of reason, however, and miserably remembered why. Meyrin and Abbey wanted her sober enough to run the MS deck and communications system in case they came under attack on the way to the Moon. Even the enemy conspired against her. And so instead she sat in her chair in the infirmary, stared at the two pale and bandaged Extended, and wondered just how sober she needed to be to make sure Emily fired the catapult the right way.

But these were her friends and they needed her—just as Sting and Auel were her friends and no amount of alcohol could wash away her anxiety for them. After fourteen years of poverty and an abusive father and another three of life on the run, she had come to the _Minerva_ three years ago and found friends, a home, stability, order, acceptance...

Especially with those two, whose lives were at least as bad as hers. And they had taken the powers they had never wanted and made them into something to stand against their old oppressors, and forced down their worst memories to carry on the fight. That had been inspiring, to be honest; through all their battles and even in their darkest hours, she had spent the last three years surrounded by friends.

Now their mortality stared her in the face, and she stared back and hated it.

—

The last time the _Minerva_ had visited the Moon was sometime in early CE 75, where they stopped at tiny Goddard City in a small crater on the near side, close to the lunar south pole. Meyrin remembered that visit well, because she had almost been killed by a Resistance contact driven mad by hallucinogenic drugs he took to escape the madness already driven into him by the war. Not everyone had what it took.

Copernicus, however, was a different experience.

Meyrin glanced around the bridge as the ship handily navigated the Debris Belt. Malik was no stranger to this part of space. Assuming the enemy left them alone—never a safe assumption, Meyrin had learned long ago—they would arrive at Copernicus in a matter of hours.

With that somewhat comforting thought, Meyrin sat back and glanced up at Abbey, seated at Roxy's console and scanning through information in the ship's central computer on Copernicus.

"You know we won't be able to stay for long," she said suddenly. Abbey blinked down at Meyrin. "Copernicus is only letting us stay long enough to take on the supplies Oshida lined up for us."

Abbey scratched her head nervously. "Something will go wrong," she replied. "It always does."

"Even so," Meyrin went on, "we can't stay at Copernicus long enough to get the new mobile suits built. We'll have to do that elsewhere." She sighed. "You have any ideas?"

"Barnacle, Gigafloat, Terminal, the Heliopolis shoal zone, Poljarny, Aqrah, Goddard City, _Ame-no-Mihashira_..." Abbey shrugged. "The question is just getting there."

Meyrin frowned at the last suggestion. "I don't think we need to go indebting ourselves to Rondo Mina Sahaku."

"Just a suggestion."

None of the options, really, were to Meyrin's liking. Everything on Earth, like Gigafloat and Aqrah, meant another atmospheric reentry that was always dodgy, especially with something like the _Charlemagne_ after her ship. Anything in space could eventually be found, by the Alliance or by ZAFT, and Meyrin did not want to be stuck in dock when that happened. Barnacle was an important shadow port that she occasionally had to visit, but she hated the thought of spending time there—for many reasons.

"We'll have to take the first option that presents itself to us," Meyrin answered. "Back to Terminal, most likely."

"We're not staying on the Moon?"

Meyrin glanced up at the tactical map on the auxiliary screen. That small ZAFT fleet, a dozen warships hovering ominously over the Moon, had not moved.

"I'm not making plans that far ahead."

"Why not?"

"Because," Meyrin pointed at the map, "we still don't know what _they're _going to do."

—

"I thought you were supposed to be resting."

Emily glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Trojan's voice in the interior observation deck, with the sweeping panorama of the Debris Belt before her. He drifted into the room and shut the door behind him.

"I guess I'm an insomniac these days."

"I guess so." Trojan landed quietly next to her, and Emily immediately felt her stomach curl at the feelings radiating off him. "Um...about yesterday..." He looked over at Emily and immediately looked back out the windows, his face red. "Why did you...y'know..."

Emily leaned forward and tried not to blush. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

"Did you think I was gonna die?"

"Just in case you did." She shifted awkwardly. "It's, uh, happened before."

Trojan frowned. "I don't think you've told me this story."

Silence prevailed between them for a moment as Emily searched for words. "Uh, well, there was a boy at Carpentaria who, um, pretty much fell in love with me." She pursed her lips and wondered why that was making her blush too. "And...the _Minerva_ went on a mission, and it was supposed to have help from some ZAFT veterans. They turned on us and during the fighting," she bowed her head, "he got killed."

"I'm sorry," Trojan said quietly.

Emily shook her head. "I didn't really like him in _that_ way."

"Then what about me?"

She looked over at him again and wracked her brain for an answer she could give him. Would he understand that she had gone insane and tortured her enemies to death after Isaac was killed? Would he understand that she didn't know herself—that she was lonely and tired and hovering on the brink of madness? That she had her father's voice tormenting her in the back of her mind?

Why did she care if he did?

"You're different."

Trojan looked back at her again and met her eyes. "What does that mean?" He paused, and Emily frowned at the feeling of doubt creeping up through him. "I mean...well, I might as well say it. I hope you weren't just doing that as a favor or something." He glanced back towards space and Emily could feel the pain. "I...hope it was more than that. I mean..."

"You idealized me, and now you know the real me a little better," Emily finished, and she reached out to touch his hand. He jumped in surprise and turned towards her. "Trojan, I didn't kiss you back there just as a favor. I really was worried you were going to die. But..." She shook her head. "I don't know how I feel about you. Or about anything. It's complicated and I don't know if I can tell you, but I just didn't..."

"Didn't want any regrets?" Trojan asked.

Emily smiled. "Yeah. That."

Trojan awkwardly took her hand and pulled her close. "Alright. I'll wait. But Emily, really, you can tell me what's going on. Don't think you can't."

She could feel his sincerity, but as she looked into his eyes, Emily knew in her heart that she couldn't.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, the Moon**

Captain Evers sat back in the bridge chair and regarded the man whose face was on the auxiliary screen with caution. Honestly, how could a Coordinator—hell, how could a military officer of any sort just let himself _go_ like that? They had standards to live up to, and what kind of soldier among the rank and file could really take seriously an officer that overweight?

On the screen, Commander Glasgow arched an eyebrow and stroked his bearded chin. "Is something the matter, captain?"

"No sir. The commander will be up to see you shortly—"

The bridge doors slid open with a burst of compressed air. "Hey, what's going on, tubbo?"

Glasgow twitched in mounting irritation. "I'll thank you not to call me that again, Commander Ehrmacht."

Varder flicked the FAITH pin on his lapel with a grin and landed next to the captain's chair. "Right, right, I'll buy you a cheeseburger to make up for it. Double bacon, onion rings, the works. What's going on over there anyway?"

On the screen, a decidedly annoyed Glasgow peered off to the side on the bridge of his flagship. "I'm sure you've received High Command's orders by now. You're supposed to support my squadron's mission on the Moon. The _Lothar Meyer_ arrived yesterday with the containers. Once we rendezvous with you, we'll be ready to begin."

Varder smirked triumphantly. "Operation _Hell's Wind_ is about to begin, huh? The Naturals will get a kick out of this."

In the captain's chair, Evers shifted uneasily. Operation _Hell's Wind_, the plan by ZAFT's High Command to destroy the lunar colonies' ability to contribute to the Alliance war machine and economy. As necessary as Evers knew it to be, he knew too that it would be ghastly to watch.

And here he was, with front row seats.

"No offense, Glasgow," Varder continued, "but these sorts of operations aren't really your forte. I'm surprised they're having you lead one."

"Technically, they're not," another voice spoke up. Varder and Evers looked on in surprise and anger flashed across Glasgow's features as another man stepped into view, in a ZAFT Black Shirt uniform with a dark eyepiece over his right eye. "I will be in charge."

Varder arched an eyebrow. "And you are...?"

"Leons Graves," explained Glasgow, and Varder's face flashed with recognition—and confusion. "I'll be in charge of the fleet; he's in charge of the actual carrying out of the operation."

"I don't recognize you from any ZAFT forces, Mr. Graves," Evers started with a doubtful frown.

"That's because I'm not _in_ the ZAFT forces," Graves said with an amused grin. "I'm a mercenary." Evers blinked, and Graves smirked at his disbelief.

"He has expertise and knowledge we lack," Glasgow replied. He glanced off to the side on his bridge's flagship. "Final supplies are coming in. I'll see you at the rendezvous, Commander Ehrmacht."

"Of course." The screen went dark and Ehrmacht crossed his arms. "That was unexpected."

Evers scowled. "The hell are we using a mercenary for?"

"Oh, it gets better," Ehrmacht said with a shake of his head. "Leons Graves isn't just any mercenary. He's a Natural mercenary." Evers' jaw dropped, and Varder turned back towards the bridge doors. "Keep us on schedule to rendezvous with Glasgow's fleet. This mission just got a little more interesting."

—

**April 30th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

The holographic image vanished, and in her high-backed chair in the control room of Messiah, Valentine Sunogachi sat back with a contemptuous sigh. "Another day, another message from that simpering fool Chiao Xu."

At her side, Kira fidgeted. "At least he's a useful simpering fool."

"Potentially," Valentine corrected. "From a purely military standpoint, he's of questionable utility at best. His army on Earth got obliterated and his troops in space, while more competent, are not exactly many."

"He might still be useful as a distraction," Kira offered. "The Alliance spent three years trying to destroy him. They crushed his army on Earth; in space they still haven't been decisive. Especially not with that battle at Terminal."

Valentine sat back to think, and Kira glanced away awkwardly. Truth be told, in Chiao Xu he had seen something different. Not a man to win the peace by any means—no, not since the peace would have to be won by cruelty and fire and war—but perhaps a man to rule the world after the guns fell silent...

"Either way," Valentine continued, breaking Kira out of his reverie, "we do need to take steps to ensure that he does not become a threat. Distracting as he could be to the Alliance, he could be just as distracting to us."

Kira felt his stomach tighten. "Does that mean we need to take him out?"

"It means we need to keep an eye out." Valentine looked back up at him. "Operation _Hell's Wind_ is starting soon. You may need to head out and deal with that too."

"Yes," Kira said quietly, "of course."

—

As the sounds of the hangar went quiet behind the hangar doors, Juarez Recardo glanced over awkwardly at Gary Talon. The maintenance was done and the _Fortuna_ was preparing to set out for the Moon, in support of Operation _Hell's Wind_. They would probably face stiff Alliance resistance—and most likely, the _Minerva_.

"You know they've got a new Gundam," Juarez spoke up.

Gary glanced over. "The Resistance?"

"Yeah. They debuted it at Terminal. Looks like it's got that Voiture Lumiere system."

"So what. We've got one too."

"Yeah, in pieces in a hangar in Messiah. Nothing we could deploy into combat."

Gary crossed his arms. "What's so special about it? I know it's fast, but so what? The Vice Marshal could bring it down. Speed's not everything."

"No," Juarez agreed, "but we'll have to be there too. And..." He shook his head. "You know what's going to be going on."

"Don't tell me you're going all soft on me, Juarez," Gary said suddenly.

"I'm not. But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Well I don't either," Gary shot back, and Juarez blinked in surprise at the sudden defensiveness. "But we've got Kara going all fanatical on us and we've got our orders from Marshal Sunogachi herself, so what are we supposed to do?" He touched the shiny FAITH pin on his lapel. "We don't wear these things just as decorations, y'know."

Juarez leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "No, we don't," he said, "but do we surrender our moral agency just because we're soldiers?" He shook his head. "I'm reminded of something Lacus Clyne said at Jachin Due six years ago. 'Attacking won't soothe the hurt.'"

Gary stepped past Juarez with a disgusted snort. "Don't lecture me on Lacus Clyne, man," he snarled as he headed off. "Lacus Clyne gave the orders. She never had to take them."

As Gary disappeared around a corner, Juarez glanced after him and sighed sadly. Lacus Clyne had built an army for people who wouldn't stand taking immoral orders...but Lacus Clyne was gone and now there was none of that left.

He looked back over his shoulder, towards the hangar doors and the mobile suits that lay beyond it, and wondered how many more times he could swallow his conscience.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Copernicus, the Moon**

Meyrin Hawke watched uncomfortably on the _Minerva_'s bridge as the Resistance contacts filed through the gantry onto the ship. She glanced tiredly at Abbey. Another day, another allegedly friendly port of call.

This one was well-hidden, one of many built into the rocky lip of the Copernicus crater. A well-hidden docking bay was the only place where the _Minerva_ could receive its latest batch of supplies from the Junk Guild, including the first set of parts it would need to build a new set of Gundams. They could not stay long enough to manufacture the rest; they would need Terminal or Gigafloat for that. But it was a start, and in the meantime it was an opportunity for shore leave for her exhausted crew—which was almost as important.

The bridge doors hissed open and Meyrin tried not to cringe at the man before her. Instead she extended a hand for a reluctant handshake. "Welcome aboard the _Minerva_, Mr. Lucini."

Kenaf Lucini flashed that snake-like grin of his as he shook Meyrin's offered hand. "The pleasure's all mine," he said, and stepped aside. "I'm sure you've already met..."

Behind Kenaf, a bespectacled woman in a Eurasian Federation Captain's uniform saluted sharply, and Meyrin blinked in surprise and momentarily forgot to return it. "M-Meriol?"

"It's been a while, Meyrin," Meriol said with a grin and shook her hand. "I hope Canard was well when you guys saw him last?"

"Y-Yeah," Meyrin said, "but I didn't realize you were going to be here—"

"The _Ortygia_ just completed a long-awaited refit to match the modern _Agamemnon_-class ships," Kenaf explained airily, "and brought you your requested supplies." He leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. "And me."

Meyrin's smile vanished. "And what are you here for, Mr. Lucini?"

"Information, of course," Kenaf answered. "For my, ahem, usual fee. Of course."

"Mr. Copland will see to your payment," Meyrin answered, "so in the meantime, what is this information you're selling to us?"

Kenaf produced a flash drive from his pocket, plugged it into the _Minerva_'s mapping console, and called up a portrait of a brown-haired man with a black eyepiece over his right eye. "This man," he said, "by the name of Leons Graves. A mercenary that you might have heard of in your unique line of work. I'm sure you'd be interested to know that he's working for ZAFT these days."

"Why would he be doing that?" Abbey asked. "He's a Natural. What reason do they have to hire him?"

"His knowledge of lunar cities is unsurpassed," Meriol answered.

"You may want to know this," Kenaf continued with a smirk, "because my sources indicate that not only is he in the employ of ZAFT, but he's working out of a ZAFT fleet of about a dozen ships." He arched an eyebrow. "For those of you watching at home, you may note that there is such a fleet in lunar orbit at this very moment."

Meyrin glanced anxiously out the bridge windows. A Natural mercenary, working for virulently anti-Natural Coordinators, in a ZAFT fleet orbiting the Moon? "Did your sources have anything to say about what he's doing with them?"

"Something called 'Hell's Wind,'" Kenaf said with a shrug. "Nothing more, I'm afraid. But give me time and I'll know. I always do."

"We probably won't have time," Abbey interrupted. "If ZAFT was going to bulk that fleet up any bigger, they would've done so by now."

Meriol frowned. "Then what are they going to do with twelve warships?"

Meyrin looked back out the bridge windows, towards the starry black sky—where, somewhere up above, a dozen ZAFT vessels were waiting, and every instinct within her screamed to go find them—before they made the first move.

—

"This is the worst shortcut _ever!_" Lily wailed, and to underscore her point, her angry voice echoed off the walls of the disused warehousing district of Copernicus.

At her side, Viveka rolled her eyes, Trojan frowned in what looked like agreement he did not want to vocalize, and Emily glanced over with annoyance at Viveka. "All 'cuz you didn't want to wait in traffic."

"You saw how bad it was backed up! It would be 2000 by the time we got back!" Viveka exclaimed. "And besides, that's all 'cuz _this_ little runt," she brought down her hand on Lily's head just hard enough to elicit a startled squeak, "insisted on missing our bus so she could eat an ice cream sundae the size of her head." She smirked triumphantly at Emily. "Which _you_ bought for her."

"I can't believe you actually ate it _all_," Trojan said quietly.

Emily shrugged. "I promised her I would do something cool for her."

"And that was the coolest ice cream sundae _ever!_" Lily added with a grin.

"But then we missed our bus," Viveka went on, "and so, here we are."

"Using the shortcut that you said was going to work," Trojan pointed out, and then shut his mouth when Viveka glared back at him.

"Shut up. We can get back into the docking bay through here." She pointed up ahead, towards a gate where a long row of docking bays in the crater wall could be seen through the thick transparent ceiling high above. "See? Now quit bitching."

Together they rounded a corner and Emily listened with half an ear as Lily triumphantly defended her ice cream consumption prowess. She glanced over at Trojan and caught his gaze, and returned it with a small smile that instantly made him blush. There was one upside to this relationship, whatever it was; she could make him blush on a whim, and that was cute and funny.

The others, at least, had had a good time, and that made Emily feel better. The positive energy helped push away her own problems, if only for a moment, and—

She froze in her tracks, catching her companions' attention. "What is it, Emily?" Trojan started, his hand falling to his belt, where a handgun was hidden inside one of the pouches.

Emily blinked in disbelief, at the feeling of human beings—how had she missed that? How had they gotten this close to her without noticing? Who—?

"I see your senses are as sharp as we predicted, Emily," spoke a voice she knew all too well.

She turned around and her blood turned to ice in her veins. Lily hid behind her; Trojan backed away protectively in front of her; Viveka gasped in disbelief. The man before them—the hawkish nose—the goatee—the burning, baneful eyes—

Emily took a terrified step back. "F-Father...?"

Standing before them, hands behind his back, accompanied by a dozen well-armed men, Gerhardt von Oldendorf bared his teeth in a smile.

"It's been a long time, my little angel of death."

—

To be continued...


	14. Phase 14: Murder, Incorporated

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note: With apologies, of course, to Bruce Springsteen.

—

Phase 14 - Murder, Incorporated

—

**April 30th, CE 77 - Copernicus, the Moon**

The armed men pressed forward with submachineguns leveled off. Standing in front of her trapped friends, Emily stared in fear at the man before her.

Gerhardt von Oldendorf was exactly as she had remembered. A chiseled, scowling face; dark eyes; that trim goatee that hid his mouth and framed his face so frighteningly. The world swayed around her and her memories took her back to that cold metal bed, with his face looming above her, triumphant in her agony—

_She will be our angel of death_.

Viveka stepped in front of her sister with a furious look, and Gerhardt seemed surprised at her new appearance—her eyepatch and the fingers of her mechanical hand poking out from the sleeve of her blue overcoat. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Stand aside," Gerhardt ordered. "You're not the one I'm interested in."

"Like hell I will."

Gerhardt frowned and glanced over his shoulder. "In that case—"

Before he could finish, Lily lunged out from behind Trojan and slammed a flash grenade down on the ground at his feet. Gerhardt and the soldiers jumped back and turned away as light flooded out and a wall of sound slammed them head-on—and when Gerhardt looked up again, he saw Emily's companions dragging her away, towards one of the empty warehouses.

"Sir!" one of his soldiers started; Gerhardt sprinted forward and drew a handgun from his suit jacket.

"Just out of the blue she falls into my lap," he snarled, "I am not going to miss this opportunity!"

Inside the warehouse, crouching behind a crate, Viveka shook Emily by her shoulders. "Em, listen, you've gotta snap out of this. If you don't, he's going to get you."

"Who _is_ he anyway?" Trojan started.

Viveka swallowed uncomfortably. "Um, he's our father."

"Y-Your _father?_" Lily sputtered. "That guy that—"

A gunshot rang out and Viveka shrieked in pain and stumbled forward, clutching a wound on her right shoulder. All eyes turned towards the warehouse door, where Gerhardt was making his way in with a smoking pistol in his hand. Trojan and Lily yanked the two sisters to their feet as the soldiers streamed in.

"The next shot won't miss," Gerhardt's voice echoed throughout the warehouse. "You were the useless one, Viveka. I have no problem killing _you_—and don't think I wouldn't."

Viveka hissed in pain as she clenched her mechanical hand over the wound. "Love you too, dad."

Gerhardt approached with his gun leveled off and two soldiers flanking him, and his footsteps crashed through Emily's consciousness. She looked up in fear and felt the world melting away around her—and instead she felt pain shooting through her muscles, exhaustion weighing down her body, fear and panic and adrenaline rushing through her—

"As for you, Emily," Gerhardt continued, "I think you've had enough adventuring. You're coming with me."

"No!" Viveka screamed, and threw herself in between her father and sister.

Gerhardt scowled in frustration and raised his gun. "Fool—"

A bolt of horror shot through Emily's mind and with a shout, she yanked her sister to the side before Gerhardt could fire. Fear, anger, and pain rushed together in her veins as she looked back at her father, into those dark eyes that had seared her soul and burned in her memories. Gerhardt regarded her with an amused look.

"I must say, Emily, in a strange way I'm proud of you." He pointed the gun at her head. "You may not be on the right side, but your abilities and powers have progressed further than I had expected. All we have to do is shuffle you back to the right place and you'll be exactly as I wanted."

Emily ground her teeth and fought the terror rising up her throat. "That's not true."

"Oh, but it is," Gerhardt chuckled. "Look at yourself. Lighting-fast reflexes, precognitive insight, empathic sensitivity, telepathic communication, expanded cognition, and natural skill with a mobile suit. You tear apart enemies in battle like they were nothing." He smirked back at her triumphantly as he watched her tremble. "Don't think I haven't been following you, my little Emily. Remember Shoyou? Murmansk? Colonel Meyers? Volgograd? Novorossiysk? Hormuz? The ZAFT veterans off Orb? Carpentaria? And don't think I haven't heard about your new Gundam and your performance at Terminal." He laughed. "My perfect little weapon has just been astray all this time."

Emily got back to her feet, tears in her eyes. "It's _my_ power!" she snapped. "It's...it's not yours!"

With a snarl, Gerhardt promptly smacked Emily across the jaw with the grip of his pistol, knocking her to the floor, to the gasps of her friends and the surprise of even the soldiers behind him. "You are _nothing_ without me!" he roared, and trained his weapon on her skull. "I gave you _life itself!_ I gave you your powers, the training you needed to use them, and you _dare_ act as though you have _any_ right to it yourself? _I_ created you, Emily; you are _mine_ and I will do with you as I please!" He stepped forward and slammed his foot down next to Emily's head. "If you think I'm bluffing," he added with a furious gleam in his eyes, "then just ask your mother."

At that, Viveka sprang to her feet and slammed her left shoulder into Gerhardt's chest, knocking him back. She whipped around— "Lily, _now!_"

Lily leapt up, wielding another grenade, and hurled it over the soldiers' heads—into a pile of propane tanks. Gerhardt and the soldiers scrambled to safety as a chain of thundering explosions ripped through the warehouse—while Trojan and Lily dragged the two sisters into a side passage to make their escape.

"Lily, call the _Minerva_," Viveka groaned and squeezed her hand over her wound. "Tell them we could use a ride back. A fast one."

As they dashed through the darkened hallways, Trojan glanced nervously at Emily, and the raw fear and pain etched into her face, and thought back to that moment when she had said she couldn't tell him about herself, and understood.

—

"You'd think going out for ice cream wouldn't end in gunfights and injuries," Shinn grumbled as he and Athrun raced through the _Minerva_'s halls, towards the hangar. Athrun shook his head with a sigh.

"An ace pilot, an Extended, and two experienced guerrillas. I'm surprised they didn't run into trouble sooner." He keyed open the hangar doors and dove through. "Come on, we'll take my car."

Shinn blinked. "Your car?"

"My Starchaser," Athrun explained. They landed by an alcove in the side of the hangar where something was covered by a large tarp. Athrun flung it off, and Shinn immediately felt his jaw drop as Athrun gestured to it and said, "They wanted a fast ride back. They're gonna get one."

"Holy shit," Shinn answered. The sleek, dark Starchaser 500 was an insanely expensive sports car—a _muscle_ car, really, something designed for performance, speed, handling, a car that was designed to perform more like a fighter jet on the ground. Shinn watched in awe as Athrun opened up a bench seat behind the driver and passenger's seats. "Where the hell did you get this?"

"Trade secret," Athrun said. "Get in. No time to lose."

Shinn dropped himself down into the passenger seat and yelped in surprise as Athrun took off out the ventral vehicle hatch, tires squealing all the way.

—

Amid the smoke rising and dust falling from the ruined warehouse, Gerhardt von Oldendorf stomped into the open air with a furious glare. There were men following Emily—she would not escape Copernicus—but to think she had been right there before him, so easily killed or captured, and that damned _other_ brat of his had interfered...

He glanced up at the sight of a combat truck coming to a halt nearby. The door popped open and a man in an olive drab military uniform stepped out. Franz Schroeder, the operational leader of the Sutter Security Company whose men were on Emily's trail, would get this cleared up. He had damn well better if he wanted his promised handsome payment.

"I have infantry and vehicular agents on the scent," Schroeder reported, and he waved Gerhardt into the truck, "but before they go any further I'd like to know where you got this information. We had a hell of a time just putting this all together."

Gerhardt settled into the back seat with Schroeder and watched as the soldiers piled into another truck, and the two vehicles took off towards the streets. "It's classified," he answered after a moment's thought, which was something of a lie—because the information had come from Irene, and she had just mentioned "a contact," and damned if he knew what _that_ meant—but he would have to wring it out of her at some point. "Don't let her get far. She's probably going to try to link up with other personnel from the _Minerva_. Kill the others, but don't kill Emily unless her escape is imminent." He rubbed his head in frustration and discouragement. His Project Evolution had gone so wrong, and here on Copernicus had emerged a glorious opportunity to set it all right—but now...

"There's not much we can do without interference from Copernicus's police and defense force," Schroeder warned. "They'll be on their way here soon to investigate whatever the hell you guys did in that warehouse."

"They won't be a problem," Gerhardt snapped. "The Alliance will deal with them. In the meantime, while this first failure is annoying, I still have a plan to capture her, and she's still right on course for it. I want you to activate a mobile suit squad to join the search and contain Emily when you find her."

Schroeder blanched in disbelief. "A _mobile suit_ squad?"

"Even Sutter Security's Strike Dagger units will be sufficient."

"Against four disoriented teenagers, yes, but sir, you can't seriously suggest deploying mobile suits into Copernicus," Schroeder sputtered. "The defense force would attack them for sure!"

"I told you to leave them to me," Gerhardt snarled. "I hired you to get rid of my meddlesome older daughter and capture my younger one. Are you going to do that or not?"

Schroeder frowned. "Of course."

"Good. Then let's get to work."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Shinn and Athrun just left," Abbey explained as she and Meyrin walked down the _Minerva_'s hallways. "Whatever is going on in there with Emily and the others, they'll take care of it."

"Without getting Copernicus PD all over them, I hope," Meyrin added.

They came to a stop outside the infirmary and ducked inside, and Meyrin looked sadly at the first two beds, where Sting and Auel were still under sedation. The doctor had completed the always-adventurous trick of zero-gravity surgery to remove shrapnel from their bodies and repair internal damage. It was good for them that they were Extended—because with their genetically accelerated healing capabilities, they wouldn't face months of costly rehabilitation. The Earth Alliance had thought ahead in designing its weaponized humans.

"They'll be back on their feet in a few weeks," Abbey said quietly, "but until then..."

"Until then, they aren't to set foot outside of here," Meyrin answered. "I know one or both of them will have some crazy idea to come help us in battle while still wounded and they'll just wind up getting themselves killed."

Abbey arched an eyebrow. "You want to contain two Extended?"

"Two wounded Extended, and I'd rather have them here, resting, able to return to the fight someday, than to have them go jumping into battle while injured and getting killed. Call it shepherding our resources."

"Shepherding our resources," Abbey repeated with a smirk. "They'll appreciate that."

"They won't have a choice," Meyrin said, and cracked a grin herself. "Captain's orders."

—

Rau Le Creuset looked approvingly over the preliminary schematics of what promised to be his new ride, the Judgment Gundam. He smiled at the name. One of his better choices, really.

"Pretty much the major innovation here for Judgment is this master-slave setup in the DRAGOONs," Abes explained, and pointed to the wire drawings on his tablet. "Two King DRAGOONs that each carry five smaller units, and the King units function as DRAGOONs themselves. To support the whole system, we've designed a more efficient, high-capacity DRAGOON networking system and improved broadcast antennae. And the basic mobile suit itself will have vastly improved handling and maneuverability."

Rau frowned thoughtfully and glanced up at the slumbering Eclipse, across the hangar. "Still inferior to Emily's new machine, though."

"Oh, _that_ thing is a _beast_," Abes snorted. "We just barely even understand the Voiture Lumiere. And Yolant, Vino, and I only put _these_ designs together as a hobby that the captain asked us to turn into fully functional machines."

"I see," Rau said. "It will more than suffice, I'm sure." He smirked. "I just wouldn't want to be left behind on the battlefield, you see."

Abes smirked back. "'course not."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of the Earth**

"You mean to tell me you're _afraid_ of the big bad _Minerva?_" cackled Travis Alterman, as he drifted over the head of his deactivated Nebula Blitz Gundam. In front of him, Grey and Merau glanced at each other awkwardly.

"I didn't say 'afraid,'" Grey offered. "I said 'cautious.'"

"Listen, kid," Travis said with a patronizing smirk, "I heard all about your little incident in Volgograd. And so you got the hots for that Angel of Death chick. Fine, whatever gets your rocks off, dude." He waved a hand dismissively as a red-faced Grey sputtered in outrage. "But let me just give you one piece of advice." He planted a hand on his shoulder and his smile vanished. "Don't think about her. Don't think about turning her. Don't think about capturing her. Don't think about anything else but killing her."

Grey blinked. "What are you—"

"Hate her. Hate her guts. Hate her face, her voice, her name, hate everything about her. Because," his grin returned, "she's not what you think."

"Wait a minute," Merau cut in, "what are you talking about? What do _you_ know about her?"

"I get it," Travis laughed. "You think she's not that different from you, so that's why you have a hard time fighting her. But, well, I'll put it this way: you're wrong. In more ways than you realize."

With that, he headed off towards the hangar doors with a laugh.

—

Ivan Danilov sat back as his bridge crew set to work and steeled himself for a return to the battlefield.

"Engine trials just came out green," Vera reported from her station. "Weapons and other repairs checked out as well. We're ready to go."

Danilov smiled tightly. "Well done. Helm, set course for Copernicus, maximum speed!"

The _Charlemagne_ rumbled as its engines came to life and Danilov savored the feeling of getting his battleship back on the move. "Captain," Vera said suddenly, "what do you think that ZAFT fleet at Copernicus is doing?"

"I have no right idea, Vera," he answered, "but judging by their previous actions, I'm sure it'll be something awful. There's a good deal of military manufacturing on Copernicus that they may be targeting."

Vera turned her eyes out the bridge windows, towards the Moon. "All their attacks have been aimed at the Alliance's economy, and," she paused as she shuddered, "the population."

"From their perspective, I suppose it makes sense. The Alliance's chief advantage over ZAFT is its massive industrial, economic, and demographic resources—the same things ZAFT has been targeting ever since they returned."

He narrowed his eyes at Copernicus and battled down the growing feeling of dread.

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_**, orbit of the Moon**

"How am I supposed to take orders from a _Natural?_"

The question hung in the air on the _Caernafon_'s bridge and Glasgow squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. It was a good question, and the blond-haired young man in the ZAFT Red uniform—with the conspicuous emblem of FAITH on his lapel—deserved an answer, at the very least.

"It won't be for long, Rudolf," Glasgow assured him. "But nobody knows these lunar cities better than he does, and we're going to need that expertise—"

"We're Coordinators, commander!" Rudolf Wittgenstein sputtered, and slammed his hand down onto the mapping console. "We don't need those subhumans to carry out _Hell's Wind! _Commander, we're the pinnacle of our species' evolution. What could he possibly have to offer us?"

Glasgow sat back and closed his eyes. "If we were the pinnacle of human evolution we wouldn't have to do this, Rudolf. Mr. Graves will not be here for long. _Hell's Wind_ is the only operation he's been contracted for, and after we're done here he'll go back to whatever hole he spends his days in. Just swallow your pride and endure it. That is as much a sign of a superior person as anything else."

Rudolf sneered. "Are you telling me to _trust_ him, sir?"

"I'm telling you to obey him." Glasgow waved out the bridge windows, towards the array of cities—towards the Copernicus crater, stretching before them. "You're going to be in charge of the MS teams defending the landing party. You're going to have to take directions from Mr. Graves, whether you like it or not. If you can't do that as though Graves were a Coordinator and your commanding officer, then under my authority as this task force's commander, I'm benching you on the ship—FAITH or not." He narrowed his eyes. "Marshal Sunogachi has given me explicit authority to carry out this operation by any means necessary, and if it means I have to put you in the brig, I will. Don't fuck this up."

Rudolf gritted his teeth and saluted. "Yes sir."

Heaving a sigh, Glasgow sat back and returned his gaze to the city. "Besides, Mr. Graves is good at what he does."

"Glad to hear you agree," another voice spoke up. All eyes turned in surprise—towards Leons Graves, striding onto the _Caernafon_'s bridge with an air of extreme amusement. "And for what it's worth, Mr. Wittgenstein, I can make a good stir-fry too." He brushed by the growling Rudolf with a laugh as he landed by Glasgow's chair. "So there's Copernicus, eh? First target?"

"Yes, but we're going to need targeting information."

Graves waved it off. "Easily done. Lunar cities are all built the same; industrial sectors on top, to air out pollutants and shit; commercial and residential sectors underneath. The latter have access points to the surface that the landing parties can use; the fleet's guns can deal with the industrial sectors. Copernicus is a bit different since it has an upper-class commercial block on the surface, but it won't require a change in our battle plan." He glanced over his shoulder with a smirk towards Rudolf. "And I'm sure you'll be up to the task of defending our landing party?"

"Of course," Rudolf snarled back.

"Copernicus will be the first target, for maximum effect, both economic and psychological," Glasgow interrupted, hoping to head off an argument. Graves took a little too much delight in needling the aristocratic Rudolf sometimes. "After that, we'll hit Sagan City, then Theophilus, and the manufacturing centers at Humboldt City, and then we'll return to Messiah—as heroes." He sat back. "Begin the approach."

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, the Moon**

Silence hung on the bridge of the _Seraphim_ as the sleek, jet-black cruiser hovered over the dusty lunar surface. Drifting near the command chair, Varder glanced up towards the auxiliary display, where the _Caernafon_ had so charitably provided a wire grid map of the sprawling lunar city of Copernicus. At least his job was simple: protect the _Meyer_ and the _Caernafon_ and, above all else, the landing party. They could not afford failure. Since their arrival, ZAFT had preyed on small fish, forgotten colonies, overlooked convoys, isolated targets—but now they would remind the world that they would not be forgotten.

Varder glanced up at Lilith, finding her peering thoughtfully at the map. "What is it?"

"The _Minerva_ is there," she answered. "One of the outer docks, in the crater wall. The _Ortelius_ called it in from one of the long-range telescopes."

"The hell's the _Minerva_ doing here...?" Varder muttered, and drifted down next to the captain's chair. "Evers, did we catch anything on the way here?"

"No sir."

"I see." Varder looked back out the bridge windows, towards the city ahead. "That is odd. I thought they would be staying at Terminal."

"Terminal has dropped off the map since that attack the other day," Lilith pointed out. "The _Minerva_ may have headed here to keep the Alliance distracted."

"True." Varder put a hand to his chin thoughtfully. "Well, even if they're the _Minerva_ and they've got that fancy new Gundam, it's not a game changer for us." Evers glanced up dubiously towards Varder. "We have a couple of new machines up our sleeves too. And they may expect _an_ attack, but," he smirked up at Copernicus, "they won't expect _ours_."

—

**Copernicus, the Moon**

Emily came to a stop with a gasp of pain as she and her friends picked their way towards Copernicus's upper-class commercial sector. It had been Viveka's idea to make a beeline towards the most inhabited and frequented region of the city and make their way back to the ship through there, in hopes that the crowds would hide them from Gerhardt and his minions. So far, it seemed to be working—at the cost of crowding out any sense of approaching people from Emily's Newtype senses, and she was far from having a clear mind to think with anyway.

They came to a stop in an alley through which they had followed the winding path from the warehouses up to the commercial sector. Beyond were the bright lights and sizable crowds of Copernicus's glitzy business district. Viveka slumped against the wall with a gasp of breath.

"Let me look at that," Trojan said, and gave her no choice as he yanked back her coat to examine the wound on her shoulder. "Doesn't look too bad, but we'd better get back." He glanced over at Lily. "Who's coming to get us?"

"Shinn and Athrun. I activated the beacon."

Emily leaned against the wall and struggled to catch her breath—and to focus on that instead of the terrifying face back so clearly in her mind.

_She will be our angel of death._

How could she deny what he had said? How could he have pierced through her pretensions so easily and uncovered the dark truth at the heart of her anxiety? Even as she struggled to make his power her own, she became his masterpiece all the same.

"We should go," Viveka grunted, and looked over at Emily. "Let's stick to the alleys. He's probably got people combing the streets." The four weary pilots got to their feet and headed back into the back alleys and lots, where the cargo trucks passed through for deliveries and handling the less glamorous side of those glitzy businesses out front. Emily groaned in pain—at the pain in her heart and the pain in her legs, from all that running—

Her instincts shot to life and she whirled around, just in time to see a truck smash through a pile of wooden crates and screech to a halt in front of her. Emily and her friends backed away—but even before they could draw weapons, more of those heavily armed men swarmed into the alley, and Emily shrieked in surprise as rough hands seized her, pushed her forward, and threw her at someone's feet—

She looked up in fear at the sound of her father's laugh.

"Quite a workout you gave us, Emily," he chuckled, and nodded to the men. "Put her in. We're leaving."

Emily screamed in terror as the soldiers bound her arms and flung her into the truck's backseat. One of the soldiers gestured towards Viveka, Trojan, and Lily. "What about them?" he asked.

"Kill them," Gerhardt said with a wave, and hopped into the truck.

Left behind, with her heart pounding and her head swimming, Viveka opened her mouth to scream as the truck peeled away with a screech of tires—but the soldiers stepped into view instead, guns leveled off. "You heard the director," one of them said, and pointed his rifle at Trojan's head. "Nothing personal, kids. Just business."

Trojan only scowled—and faster than the soldiers could see, he swept Viveka and Lily's legs out from under them and knocked them to the floor as the soldiers began to fire. They had time only to blink in surprise—Trojan rushed towards the first one, seized his head, twisted, and flung the dead man at one of his compatriots. The soldiers turned their guns towards Trojan—just in time for Lily to spring back up with a handgun and kill another. Trojan darted forward again and snapped another soldier's neck, then whirled around and used the man as a shield against the fourth and fifth men's guns. Lily took down one of them, and the fifth and sixth backed away in disbelief, guns in their hands trembling—just in time for Viveka to stagger back up and kill them with a gun of her own.

"Shit," Viveka groaned, and fell to one knee with her gun clattering to the ground. Trojan and Lily rushed to her side, but she waved them off. "I can't believe this. Both of you get up; we have to follow them. Where would they be heading?" She waited a moment for an answer and then hauled herself back to her feet. "Goddammit, how could I let this happen?"

"Calm down," Trojan said suddenly, and pushed her back against the wall. "You're injured and we're disoriented. They're probably heading for the docks if they're trying to kidnap her. They would want to get away as fast as possible."

"Then what are we just waiting here for?" Lily wailed.

"We don't know which dock and even if we did, we couldn't possibly catch up," Trojan said. "You stay here with Viveka, I'll—"

"I'm not staying _anywhere,_" Viveka snarled, and with that, she shouldered her way past Trojan and took off down the alley after the truck.

Trojan held back a sigh. "This is not going to end well..."

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, orbit of the Moon**

"So they're on the move," Joaquin said with a sneer on the _Lucifer_'s bridge. Nearby, Morgan Chevalier battled his unease and Ortega squirmed in the captain's chair. "I imagine they're going after Copernicus's industrial sector, don't you?"

Morgan hesitantly nodded. "Probably."

"Then why hasn't Copernicus's defense force done anything? Aren't they going to sortie?"

Ortega cleared his throat. "Colonel, Copernicus is still technically neutral, so they may believe they have nothing to fear from ZAFT. So far ZAFT's attacks have come against Alliance targets, military and civilian."

Joaquin scoffed. "Ridiculous. There's no distinction in this war—especially not in the minds of _those_ monstrosities." He waved a hand towards Ortega. "The _Lucifer_ will move in to assess the situation. Captain Danilov is bringing the _Charlemagne_ in as well; we will wait for him to arrive before taking any action against the ZAFT fleet." He glanced out the bridge windows towards the vague direction of the _Charlemagne_. "Danilov...he'll just have to make up for his failure at Terminal."

—

**Copernicus, the Moon**

The tires shrieked against the road and passerby turned in disbelief as Athrun's sleek Starchaser slid across the pavement and straight into an open spot on the side of the road. Shinn vaulted over the door and rushed towards one of the alleys as Athrun kept watch behind—and Shinn noted fearfully that among the familiar points of life running through that alley, Emily was not among them.

He caught up with Viveka, Lily, and Trojan around a corner. "Where's Emily?"

Viveka slammed her metal fist against a wall. "They—they got her," she gasped. Shinn's stomach wrenched as he looked over Trojan and Lily's desolate faces. "Captured her...don't know where..."

"Jesus Christ," Shinn muttered. "Come on, we're getting back to the car." He led them back out to the street and watched them blink in surprise at the sight of an expensive sports car with Athrun Zala behind the wheel. Athrun himself started up as he saw Viveka shamble into the light, clutching her shoulder.

"Shit," he hissed. "Shinn, first aid kit under the passenger's seat. All of you, get in. What's going on?"

"Somebody captured Emily," Shinn explained. "They don't know where they took her."

Athrun scowled off towards the rest of the city. "We'll find her. Who did this?"

He looked back, noticing at last the whirlpool of emotion churning within Viveka, and she looked back bleakly at him. "Our father."

Shinn slammed the door behind him as Trojan and Lily set to work on Viveka's wounds in the backseat and Athrun wheeled the car back onto the road. "Well," he said, "all's not lost yet." He tapped the side of his head. "Your dad might be able to hide from you, but he can't fucking hide from _me_."

"Can you find her in this whole city?" Athrun asked.

"Just let me concentrate," Shinn said, sitting back and closing his eyes, "and follow my lead."

—

The hum of the engine roared in Emily's brain, sending her thoughts scattering in a cloud of sickening fear. She struggled to push down the panic; her father sat in a seat across from her, staring coldly at her, sitting next to a man in an olive drab uniform; the rest of the cab was filled with men in combat fatigues and flak jackets, all with guns, all pointed at her. She looked away from her father, as the helplessness of her childhood bubbled up from her throat and the words he'd spoken seared her mind.

"Well," Gerhardt said into the silence, "I'll admit, I'm a bit relieved." He sat back and comfortably draped one leg over the other. "When we had you in incubation, I was afraid you weren't going to meet all of our standards. But I've been pleasantly surprised. We'll have you back to work for me in no time, and then," he grinned, "all my plans will be back on schedule."

The uniformed man blinked and looked over at Gerhardt. "There's a lot here you haven't told me about her."

"There's a lot here you're paid not to know about her, Schroeder," Gerhardt said, "but my daughter is an extraordinary little girl. My angel of death."

Emily held back a sob. "I'm not your angel of death."

"I thought we'd had that conversation already," Gerhardt responded with a laugh. "You've always been a tool, Emily, and for the past few months the wrong people have been using you—but no longer." He grinned over at Schroeder. "You should be more excited, really. The Earth Alliance's best, the cream of the Phantom Pain's crop, have fallen in battle before her—and yet it is you, Franz Schroeder, who brings her to heel. What an addition to _your_ résumé."

Schroeder looked thoughtfully out the truck's windows, and Emily shivered under her father's icy gaze. "You killed my mother," she said at last.

"Emily," Gerhardt scoffed, "still on that, are you?" He shrugged before the questioning eyes of Schroeder and his men. "No, I didn't kill your mother. She was frail and sick and died of an internal hemorrhage that bled her to death before the doctors could open her up and repair the damage. Quite a tragedy, really, but there was no helping it. I don't know why you blame _me_ for it."

"Because you made my mother give birth to my sister and me," Emily said, not knowing why she felt this had to be brought up, and knowing that the men in the truck were squirming in discomfort at it. She lowered her head and fought back the tears. "Because...because of us."

"Oh, is _that_ what the trouble is," Gerhardt chuckled. "Such a silly child. Lots of talent, but much to learn." He turned towards Schroeder. "How far out are we?"

"Another twenty minutes, probably. Traffic is heavy."

"Fine. I have a ship lined up to let us escape, and once we're clear of Copernicus, you, Mr. Schroeder, will be _richly_ rewarded."

He looked back at Emily with a chilling smile.

_She will be our angel of death._

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

There was a tiny, almost imperceptible point of suffering out there in the vast sweep of human lives in Copernicus, and amid all the psychic chatter, Rau Le Creuset focused on that one point with interest. Obviously it had worked.

Having one's own network in the shady world of information brokering had its definite advantages. It had taken only a little bit of cash to push word to the office of Gerhardt von Oldendorf that the _Minerva_ had docked at Copernicus—and Emily von Oldendorf would be out and about.

Judging by the fear, she was with her father—and judging by the distance between the familiar pressure of Shinn Asuka, something had happened. Perhaps she had been captured. No matter. Shinn would get her back, and the _Minerva_ would not rest until its Angel of Death was returned.

And in the meantime, Emily had no doubt come face to face with her father. No doubt now she remembered just what she was, just how inescapable her power was, just how deeply her fate suffused her life. She could no longer deny herself as the Angel of Death—as _his_ Angel of Death, his tool, his weapon for destruction and chaos. And once she accepted that cold, harsh reality, it was a simple matter to show her the ugly writhing bugs in the mud beneath the shiny rock of the Cosmic Era—and to whisper in her ear and remind her that she was indeed the bringer of death...and their time had come.

Rau smiled at the thought.

—

**Copernicus, the Moon**

"Could you _please_ try not to drive in a way that will get the Copernicus PD all over our asses?" Viveka asked, as Trojan finished bandaging her shoulder.

"Newtypes don't have to follow traffic laws," Athrun answered. "Shinn, where are they?"

"Up on the freeway, northbound," he said quietly, eyes squeezed shut and sweat beading on his brow. Athrun swerved up the onramp and wove his way into traffic. "She's not too far away..." He opened his eyes and scanned the vehicles ahead. "That brown combat truck up there. That one."

"And now that we're here," Trojan spoke up, "how are we going to handle this? You want to pit them or something?"

"Not with all this traffic," Athrun answered. "Fold down the back seat and open the hatch behind it. You can reach into the trunk that way; I have some weapons in there."

Lily did as instructed, and she, Trojan, and Viveka gaped inside the trunk of Athrun's car, at the dozen or so machineguns, assault rifles, grenades, and RPG shells inside.

"Athrun, why the hell do you carry a fucking RPG in the trunk of your car?" Viveka asked.

Athrun shrugged. "Always be prepared."

"But how are we going to get her back?" Lily sputtered. "We're not far from the docks, you know!"

Instead, Viveka reached into the trunk and pulled out one of the smoke grenades. "I've got a better idea," she said, and looked back at Trojan. "Hey kid, wanna be an action movie star?"

Trojan frowned. "I'm not sure I like where this is going."

"Drive up close to them so that Action Hero here can jump over," Viveka said. "You, take this and throw it inside the car. Pull Emily out and jump back here with her." She looked over Athrun's shoulder. "Hero Boy, you can make it work, right?"

"If they start shooting at me, no," Athrun said. "It would be better to stop them—"

"Shit, watch out!" Shinn yelled, and seized the wheel and yanked it to the side. The Starchaser squealed to the right as somebody leaned out the truck's window and opened fire with an assault rifle—hitting three other cars instead. Traffic came to a screeching halt with a vicious series of crashes that Shinn and Athrun immediately threw from their minds; Athrun slammed down the accelerator and pulled alongside the truck.

"Trojan, _now!_"

Without sparing a thought, Trojan seized the smoke grenade from Viveka and vaulted off the car's trunk onto the truck's roof. With a grunt, he flung his legs up onto the roof, pulled himself up, pegged the grenade down through the machinegun turret's open hatch on top, and then stood back as thick white smoke billowed out.

"Jesus, the things I'll do for a cute girl," he grumbled, and then hooked his legs under the railing on the truck's roof and swung himself down into the cab. Fighting back tears, he found Emily stumbling to her feet with tears of her own; without another moment to lose, he grabbed her by the elbow with both his hands and hauled her up through the roof with more strength than he realized he possessed. "_There_ you are!" he yelled, and ripped off her restraints. "Jesus Christ, is the driver still going?"

Emily coughed for a moment. "The cab's separate from the driver's seat," she said, and looked over to the right—where a sleek sports car with several familiar faces was waiting. "Um, how are we getting off—"

"You aren't," another voice added. Emily and Trojan turned and saw Gerhardt standing in front of the roof hatch, pistol in hand, leveled off at Trojan's head. "I see why Kendrick's team never reported in—"

"Viveka, _catch!_" Trojan yelled, and promptly shoved Emily off the car's roof. Athrun took his cue and rushed in to let Emily fall straight into the Starchaser's rear seat. Gerhardt's eyes flashed in fury and he moved to fire—but Trojan ducked, rushed forward, and knocked the gun from his hands. He reared back for a punch at the older man's face—but Gerhardt deflected it with surprising form and the two men found themselves locked in a flurry of blocked and traded punches.

"Trojan, move!" Lily shouted, and sprang up in the Starchaser's seat. Gerhardt threw himself onto the truck's roof as she opened fire with a submachinegun, and Trojan took his opportunity to jump back into the Starchaser. Athrun peeled away with a squeal of tires, zigzagged his way through frantically retreating traffic, and roared down a nearby offramp.

Gerhardt got back to his feet with a scowl and watched them go, as Schroeder poked his head out the roof hatch and his men aired out the truck with open windows. "What the hell was _that?_" he exclaimed.

"Schroeder, get all your men on them at once," Gerhardt growled. "I can't believe you let them get that close. Send everyone. Alpha and Bravo teams included."

Schroeder blinked in disbelief. "Alpha and Bravo teams—?"

"Don't question me!" Gerhardt snapped. "Do you want to get paid or not?"

For a moment, Schroeder stared questioningly at Gerhardt—but then threw a switch on his radio. "Alpha and Bravo teams, move in."

—

"So Emily," Trojan panted, "I'm not sure I like your father."

Emily sat with her head in her hands as Viveka tried to consolingly rub her shoulder with her mechanical hand. "Don't worry," she said, "we don't either."

"Shit, looks like they're not done yet," Athrun muttered. "In the back, get some guns out. Keep the RPG ready but out of sight."

"Wha—why?" Lily started, and turned around— "Oh. That's not good."

Emily glanced over her shoulder and felt her heart sink as she saw three more combat trucks like the one she had just escaped, rushing down the street after them. Trojan quietly assembled the RPG inside the trunk, and all of them ducked down as someone leaned out the window and opened fire with a submachinegun.

"Okay, that's not cool," Viveka grunted. "Who wants to—"

Shinn leapt to his feet in the passenger's seat with an assault rifle in hand, a grenade launcher slung underneath—and with a crash, he slammed the grenade through the truck's windshield, and ducked back down as the whole thing exploded in a flash of fire. Athrun seized the chance to duck down a side street, weaving in and out of traffic and ignoring the angry shouts and hysterical screams—but another truck followed, bullets flying.

"Jesus, only with you guys does ice cream turn into gunfights in moving cars," Shinn growled. "How is this going to work out?"

"Motherfuckers need to just _leave us alone!_" Viveka shouted—and with that, she seized another rifle with her left hand and fired it into the truck's windshield, killing its driver and sending it careening out of control into a wall. Athrun veered back onto the main road at the next opportunity and went back to work through the traffic—

"Oh, no fair," Trojan breathed.

Athrun hissed a curse and yanked the wheel to the side, screeching towards the side of the road, as a helicopter hovered into view overhead and let loose a burst of machinegun fire that ripped up the pavement and sent cars veering in all directions.

"_That's cheating!_" Lily screamed.

"My father," Emily whimpered, and squeezed her eyes shut in terror, "he's not going to give up..."

"He will if _I_ have anything to fucking say about it," Viveka growled.

"Trojan, get the RPG ready," Athrun instructed. "I won't have a choice..."

The Starchaser roared off onto the freeway, weaving its way through traffic, with a green attack helicopter rushing after it.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"What the hell is going on in there?" Abbey cried, whirling around from the auxiliary screen. Up by the mapping console, Meyrin stared in disbelief at the news reports—of the gun-wielding men in combat trucks and the helicopter currently chasing down six people in a sleek, powerful sports car.

"I thought they had all this under control," Meyrin grumbled, and turned towards Roxy at the comm station. "Roxy, get Stella out there in the Gaia. Tell her that Shinn and the others need help. Whoever is behind all this nonsense probably can't match a Gundam with Stella at the controls."

"Right," Roxy said as she reached for her headset, "and may I suggest that we never send any of those guys out for anything _ever again?_"

Meyrin scratched her head and watched the smoke rising up in Copernicus. What _was_ going on in there?

—

The ground shook and the air crackled with bullets as Athrun Zala navigated the densely packed, frantic streets of Copernicus with an attack helicopter in pursuit. He glanced up at the rear-view mirror—still there, and nothing up ahead to ward it off or snag it.

"Trojan, that RPG," he said quickly. "I'm going to duck around a building coming up; you get the RPG out and as soon as you've got a clear shot, fire. Don't give them a chance to retaliate."

"Right."

Athrun gritted his teeth and glanced over his shoulder; still there. He pushed Viveka's concern and Emily's churning vortex of emotions out of his mind and focused on the path in front of him, his instincts—Newtype and natural—guiding his hands—

With a start, he jerked the wheel to the side and sent the Starchaser into a smoking, screeching turn, whipping the car around the corner. Trojan sprang to his feet with the RPG shouldered; a second went by, the helicopter followed—

A flash of smoke and a thundering crash later, the RPG shell slammed headfirst into the helicopter's canopy and blew it apart.

"Alright!" Lily shouted, pumping her fist in the air. "Sweet!"

With a sigh, Athrun pulled back onto the main road—

Instead, Shinn seized the wheel again and pulled the car aside as a green, pulsing beam slammed into the road and sent up a wall of fire. The Starchaser skidded to a halt and then the world trembled as four Strike Daggers, painted in black, gray, and orange, landed on the road around them.

"Okay," Athrun groaned, "now what?"

"This is the second time in my life I've been chased by mobile suits in a motor vehicle," Shinn grumbled. "Athrun, we're more maneuverable. Floor it."

Athrun did as instructed and the Starchaser lurched ahead—but he slammed on the brakes just as quickly as one of the Daggers vaulted over him and came down with a crash, beam rifle leveled off.

"Shit, shit, now what—?" Viveka yelled—

A moment later, the Dagger up ahead seemed to be lifted up into the air, and with an earth-shattering shriek of torn metal, the Gaia Gundam vaulted into the sky and slammed its beam saber through the Dagger's cockpit.

Shinn looked over at Athrun. "Now! Go!"

The Starchaser screamed off back down the street and the Gaia came down with a slam, beam saber blazing, glowering down the street at the three remaining Strike Daggers. In the cockpit, Stella watched with relief as Athrun's car made its escape—and turned her eyes towards the Daggers with a scowl. "You won't touch Shinn..."

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_**, the Moon**

"What do you mean, 'smoke?'" Glasgow muttered and peered on the _Caernafon_'s bridge at the auxiliary screen, where the maximum magnification displayed puffs of smoke and fire underneath the dome that covered Copernicus's glamorous—or, rather, formerly glamorous—upper-class commercial sector. "What the hell is happening in there?"

"I don't know," Graves said with his arms crossed, "but this actually bodes well for us, commander. Whatever is happening, it will distract Copernicus's defense force long enough for the landing party to reach its objectives."

Glasgow stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I suppose. And even if they did come out to fight, if Intel is right, all they've got to rely on are Strike Daggers sold as surplus by the Alliance military."

"Best not to take chances," Graves added. "Shall we begin?"

Glasgow threw a switch on his chair's armrest. "Varder, do you see smoke underneath Copernicus's dome?"

The green-haired man on the _Seraphim_ nodded his agreement. "Are you thinking we should begin?"

"As Mr. Graves suggested, the defense force is probably distracted now," Glasgow said. "What do you think?"

Varder grinned. "Let's go for it."

"Very well," Glasgow said, and threw the switch again. "All ships of Task Force _Nihilo_, this is Commander Glasgow speaking. Operation _Hell's Wind_ will now commence. Begin the descent."

The guns of his fleet took aim and opened fire, blasting apart the upper levels of the industrial sector and moving downward, and Glasgow sat back with a quiet sigh. The world had not truly feared the Coordinators of ZAFT...but now it would.

—

To be continued...


	15. Phase 15: Operation Hell's Wind

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 15 - Operation _Hell's Wind_

—

**April 30th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Copernicus, the Moon**

"About time you guys got back!" snapped Vino Dupre as Athrun's car squealed to a halt in the _Minerva_'s hangar. "That ZAFT fleet just opened fire on Copernicus. It looks like they're targeting the industrial block."

"Can't give us a moment's fucking peace, can they," Shinn growled. "Twelve ships, how many mobile suits?"

Vino consulted his tablet for a moment. "If they're all running at full capacity, it looks like they only launched half." He jabbed his thumb towards the Destiny. "One of those shots brought down a ton of debris in the bay here, so we're going to have to clear that before we launch the ship. The mobile suits will fit through, so you'll have to go deal with it."

Shinn nodded and glanced over at Athrun and Emily, where they were helping Viveka out of the car. "I'm taking her to the infirmary," Emily spoke up. "I'll be out there with you as soon as I can."

"Right," Athrun said, and with that, he, Shinn, Trojan, and Lily took off for their mobile suits.

Meanwhile, Vino turned towards the Eclipse and tried to push down that bad feeling he had growing in the pit of his stomach. Only half of the enemy mobile suits had launched—so where was the other half?

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_**, the Moon**

Glasgow watched with satisfaction as the beams and missiles ravaged Copernicus's industrial sector. The Naturals would know by the end of all this that ZAFT was serious.

"Mobile suits are beginning to emerge from Copernicus, captain," one of the deckhands spoke up. At Glasgow's side, Leons laughed quietly.

"Not as fast as I expected. That battle or whatever inside the dome must have really distracted them." He paused, his smile disappearing. "Wait...those look like mobile suits from the _Minerva_."

"The _Minerva?_" Glasgow flipped a switch on his armrest. "Rudolf, Glasgow here. Copernicus's defense force is finally on the move, but the _Minerva_ is launching mobile suits too."

On the auxiliary screen, Rudolf scoffed. "They're under-strength and can't possibly know about the landing party."

"Be that as it may," Glasgow said, "don't take any chances."

"Of course. Rudolf, out."

Glasgow sat back with a frustrated sigh. "Idiot's going to do something stupid, like challenge one of them to a duel for the fate of Copernicus or some shit like that."

"If he does that, blast the fucker," Graves said with a shrug. "We've got more important work to do. First team should be making landfall in fifteen minutes."

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

In the _Seraphim_'s hangar bay, Varder Ehrmacht looked on in approval at the monstrous weapon before him. At his side, Lilith crossed her arms in something resembling annoyance as the mechanic in front of them explained.

"The Ratha parts have more firepower, but since the main purpose is to make the Proto Savior sort of a support platform for the Proto Gaia—"

"I get it," Varder interrupted, and smirked over at Lilith. "Looks like I'm on top this time."

"Shut up, pervert."

Varder laughed and vaulted up off the floor towards the slim mobile suit standing next to Lilith's hulking Proto Savior, in mobile armor mode with its backbreaking Ratha parts attached. The whole thing looked like a gigantic backpack with two large, flat, shield-like arms on the sides—but the engineers said it would double the Proto Savior's speed and mobility, and allow it to serve as a subflight system for his Proto Gaia—which had just agility going for it.

He settled into the cockpit, attached his helmet, and glanced up at Evers' dour face on the auxiliary screen. "Enemy mobile suits?"

"Three dozen Strike Daggers from the Copernicus defense force, and a few mobile suits from the _Minerva_," he answered. "They don't seem to realize that the landing parties are there."

"Then let's hope it stays that way. I'm going out there with Lilith. We'll handle whatever the _Minerva_ has in store."

—

Two Blaze ZAKU Warriors pulled up desperately to avoid a vicious burst of beam rifle fire from the Infinite Justice Gundam, and Athrun seized his chance with a scream to bury the Grapple Stinger anchor into the chest of one of them, then pull it close and impale it on the beam boomerang's blade. The second ZAKU backed away to shower the Justice with missiles—but Athrun darted forwards regardless and speared the second ZAKU on a beam rifle blast.

"What _are_ you doing here," he grunted—

A moment later, he vaulted back into the sky as a storm of beam bolts ripped up the lunar surface beneath him. He snapped his attention up towards the black sky—just in time to see a golden, gleaming GOUF Ignited slam its beam sword down onto the Justice's beam shield, and a man's cackling laughter filled his cockpit.

"To think I'd get to fight Athrun Zala, of all the times and all the people!" the voice cried—and Athrun narrowed his eyes at the blond man on his auxiliary screen, in a blue ZAFT flight suit. "As though today wouldn't be a good enough day as it is!"

Athrun frowned. "And just who the hell are you?"

The GOUF surged forward, flinging the Justice back; Athrun jerked the controls backwards as the GOUF brought its left arm around, heat rod glowing and whipping by. "Rudolf Wittgenstein, the one and only!" he yelled. The golden GOUF went back on the attack with both its beam guns, and the green bolts slammed against the Justice's beam shield. "First I get to join _Hell's Wind_, then I get to chance to kill one of the greatest race-traitors ever to blight our people! Fortune smiles on me after all!"

The Justice rattled and Athrun ground his teeth as the GOUF brought down its sword again to punch him backwards. He darted up over the heat rod and raised his rifle—only for the GOUF's second heat rod to lance out, curl its way around the rifle's barrel, and destroy it with a surge of electricity. Athrun backflipped away from the GOUF's fire and abandoned his rifle, and as he came back down with a crash, he drew a beam saber and clenched his fists around the Justice's controls.

"Ah, want to die like a knight, do you?" Rudolf chuckled, and the GOUF pointed its sword at the Justice with a flourish. "Yes, you must be trembling by now! Are you remembering who I am yet, Zala? Rudolf Wittgenstein, the Golden Swordsman?"

"I have no idea who the hell you are," Athrun shot back.

Fury flashed across Rudolf's features. "Well," he snarled, "you _will_," and the GOUF charged.

—

A pulsing red beam sizzled by the Destiny Gundam and through one of its afterimages as Shinn Asuka roared into battle. He fired back with his beam rifle and up ahead, the Gunner ZAKU Warrior that had shot at him ducked aside—just in time for two Slash ZAKUs to let loose a torrent of beam fire. Shinn threw the Destiny towards the lunar ground and then darted aside as a third ZAKU rushed in with a powerful overhead hack with a beam axe. He whipped around and fired his beam rifle, pounding a shot through the ZAKU's chest and blowing it apart, and then took off before the other three could catch him.

"And then there's you—!" Shinn shouted—the Destiny exchanged its rifle for its anti-ship sword, the beam flashing to life, and he whirled around to bring the sword to bear on a Blaze ZAKU Warrior behind him, sawing it in two. The ZAKUs below fired again as their comrade's machine exploded and Shinn threw his mobile suit back on the defensive.

He blinked in surprise as something touched his senses and shot a glance to his right—where he saw two more Blaze ZAKUs line up with "Canus" missile launchers in both hands. They fired the heavy missiles down—towards Copernicus, slamming into the metal surface and ripping it open. They abandoned the launchers and darted aside—just as a volley of beams from the ZAFT fleet slammed through and blasted the entire area apart in a shower of flames.

Shinn dug the Destiny's feet into the lunar dirt and readied his sword as the ZAKUs moved in—but a moment later another green beam lanced out of the smoke and blew the Gunner ZAKU apart, and the Gaia Gundam corkscrewed into the fray with a volley of rifle fire.

"Stella!" Shinn exclaimed. "What about those mercenary MS?"

"They're taken care of," Stella answered, and the Gaia lunged into the fight.

—

"I won't pretend to know what this is about," Rau muttered, "but I know you've inherited my flair for theatrics, Valentine." He smirked. "So I'm sure you won't disappoint."

His GOUF Ignited came to life with a flash from its monoeye and he roared into battle. Up ahead, a trio of ZAKU Warriors led by a Blaze ZAKU Phantom toting a "Barrus" particle cannon noticed him and opened fire. He dodged their shots expertly, saw his chance, and sent his heat rod snaking out to wrap around the ZAKU Phantom's left arm. He yanked the captured mobile suit closer, drew his sword, and chopped the mobile suit in two at the waist.

The three remaining ZAKUs broke formation and showered him with firepower; he seized the ZAKU Phantom's fallen Barrus cannon, leveled it off, and fired back to force the ZAKUs on the defensive. One of them activated its Gunner Wizard pack and sent him diving for safety with a pulsing blast of crimson energy—just in time for the next one, twirling the Slash Wizard's beam axe over its head, to slam the blade down onto the GOUF's shield.

"Too close!" Rau cried—and with a crash, he forced the ZAKU up, leveled off the Barrus cannon, and blew the ZAKU away.

The two surviving ZAKUs darted around on both sides of the GOUF and fired again, forcing Rau back. He glanced up at the dark sky at the feeling of two more approaching presences—

And then the world flashed bright and a torrent of firepower came slamming down around the GOUF. Rau threw the blue mobile suit back and returned the fire with the Barrus, but something caught his eye—a red mobile suit charging towards him, standing atop some huge black machine that almost looked like—

"I see," he grumbled, as the ZAKUs intensified their attack. "The Proto Savior and Proto Gaia." He cast a sidelong glance towards the shattered docking bay where the _Minerva_—where Emily—still waited. "This little incident just gets more and more interesting."

—

Trojan's green DOM Trooper vaulted out of the shattered docking bay with its custom beam rifle in one hand and the Gigalauncher in the other; the Vent Savior came out next in mobile armor mode and fell into formation next to the DOM. Trojan scanned the battlefield for enemies—and a moment later a wave of beam fire forced the two mobile suits apart.

"Trying to shoot me down, huh?" Lily snapped; the Vent Savior responded with a volley of plasma cannon blasts. Up ahead, Trojan took stock of his foes: two Slash ZAKU Warriors, a Gunner ZAKU Warrior, a Blaze ZAKU Phantom, and a GOUF Ignited with its beam sword drawn. The GOUF roared forward and brought its sword down; Trojan activated the beam sabers on the end of his rifle to parry the blow. The GOUF kept coming, raising its left arm and activating the heat rod—

"No you don't!" Trojan shouted; he slammed the DOM forward with sheer thruster power, sent the GOUF sprawling into the dust, and then brought the Gigalauncher to bear—and only a quick roll to the side saved the GOUF from the Gigalauncher's beam gun. The GOUF sprang back to its feet and kept up the attack. "Not gonna quit, are you?"

A moment later, the GOUF ticked its monoeye to the side and then leapt up—just as the Vent Savior's plasma cannons sent a pulsing volley of beams underneath its feet. The silver Gundam landed with a crash amid a cloud of dust, and the four ZAKUs came down behind the GOUF, guns leveled.

"Yeesh, you guys are persistent!" Lily grumbled; the ZAKUs opened fire, forcing the Savior and DOM back on the defensive, as the GOUF charged again.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

The _Minerva_ rocked from another near-miss, rattling the ship's corridors. Emily braced herself and Viveka against the wall until the shaking stopped.

"You should get out there," Viveka said quietly. "I can handle the rest."

Emily forced her father's words out of her mind. "You're the last family member I have left that actually loves me. I'm not going until I know you're safe."

Viveka blinked in surprise as they went back on the move. "Emily, what happened...?"

"I spent some quality time with dad."

"Oh no...what did he say—"

"I'll tell you later," Emily said, and guided her sister around the corner towards the infirmary. "Just get yourself patched up and stay put. I'll go take care of this."

Viveka frowned as she drifted towards the infirmary door. "Em, don't put this all on your shoulders. I don't know what dad said to you, but you know better than to listen to him. Remember? You said you were going to make your power your own?"

"Yeah," Emily agreed, and turned away, "that's what I said."

—

Sparks flying and metal straining, Rau Le Creuset's GOUF Ignited traded sword blows with the red and gold Proto Gaia's beam saber over the dusty lunar surface. The Gaia slammed the GOUF back with an overhead sword hack, sending the GOUF grinding back through the dust. Rau glanced to his left and then threw the GOUF down onto its knee—just in time for a plasma volley from the Proto Savior to sizzle by overhead. And an instant later, the Gaia was upon him again, forcing him back with a swift barrage of saber swings.

"Your capabilities are as expected," he grunted, and turned his attention towards the Proto Savior and its massive backpack, "but _yours..._"

He vaulted off one foot over the Gaia's saber strokes and showered the red mobile suit in beam bolts—only for the Savior to come streaking in with another volley of plasma and a blast from a Callidus cannon on its backpack. Rau threw his GOUF to the right and let the Savior streak by—and then jammed its sword up to deflect the Gaia's sweeping saber swing.

The Savior roared up into the black sky and transformed back to its mobile suit mode, and pounded the GOUF with beam rifle fire. Rau jerked back the controls and sent the GOUF into a steep dive as the Gaia and Savior pounded fire after him. He reached out with his senses even as the GOUF spiraled through their shots, where he could feel Emily still on the _Minerva_—still churning with emotions, still in fear, in pain.

He smirked and returned his gaze to the two Gundams below.

—

**Copernicus**

"What a disaster," Gerhardt snarled as the truck came to a stop outside the dock. Before them sat the gray hull of the _Nana Buluku_, second of the _Girty Lue_-class, already fitted out with its stealth propulsion arms. Irene Ramos was there on the deck in her black Phantom Pain uniform, looking in equal parts amused and annoyed as Gerhardt stepped out of the truck with Schroeder. "She was right there in our grasp and we still couldn't get away."

Schroeder adjusted his uniform. "I hope this won't affect the payment for our services."

"Of course not," Gerhardt said—and then he drew his pistol and shot Schroeder in the throat. As the uniformed man pitched over, dead, Gerhardt turned the gun on the truck's shocked driver and the two soldiers in the back as they stepped out, and then headed for the _Nana Buluku._ "Irene, what's going on out there?"

"That ZAFT squadron we picked up in lunar orbit is making its move," she said, and guided him towards the open hatch. "Looks like they're targeting the industrial blocks."

"I see. Does Montgomery have the ship ready to go?"

"Once we're aboard." She glanced over her shoulder, at the dead mercenaries and the growing cloud of blood behind them. "Though killing those guys will probably present some problems."

"Not as many as leaving them alive would," Gerhardt grumbled. "As soon as we're aboard, tell Montgomery to activate the Mirage Colloid and get us out of here. We can't afford to let ZAFT catch us here."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Meyrin blanched at the news. "What do you mean evacuees?"

On the auxiliary screen, Meriol shrugged from the captain's chair on the _Ortygia_. "They're not letting us launch. They want us to take on evacuees, since our hangar hasn't been damaged yet. I'm trying to refuse, but they won't open the doors otherwise, and I don't really want to space all these civilians."

"Then broadcast a warning that you're going to do just that," Abbey suggested. "Anyone dumb enough to stand in front of a warship trying to enter battle deserves what they get."

"Something's not right," Meyrin murmured, putting a hand on her chin. "If those ships are running at full capacity, then they've only launched half of their mobile suits. Where are the other half?"

—

"Emily, Eclipse, _launching!_"

The Gundam Eclipse wove its way through the wreckage in front of the _Minerva_ and took off with a flash into the battle, a spare beam rifle from the Destiny in hand. Emily scanned the battlefield—

A squad of red ZAKUs descended from the sky, beam rifles blazing. Emily fired back with her own rifle to break up their formation—then switched the rifle to her left hand, drew the Eclipse's beam sword with her right, and charged with a blast of afterimages. The ZAKUs struggled for distance, but the Slash ZAKU Phantom at their head threw itself down towards the Eclipse with a blaze of beam Gatling fire.

"You're with _that_ guy," Emily growled—and in a blinding flurry of afterimages, she lunged over the ZAKU, dropped back down behind it, and slashed it in half at the waist. As it exploded, she rocketed up towards the next enemy, a Gunner ZAKU Warrior leveling off its cannon—and as it fired, she jetted to the right to let its blast slice through an afterimage. The ZAKU desperately brought its cannon around, as the other two opened fire with their beam rifles—but the Eclipse plowed through the blasts and ripped the Gunner ZAKU in two, and then charged at the remaining two ZAKUs. Both of their Blaze packs let out a swarm of missiles; Emily slammed through them all with her beam shield, blasted through the smoke, and sliced both mobile suits in two.

Up ahead, she caught sight of a blue mobile suit—the pressure, Rau—doing battle with two mobile suits, one sleek and red, the other a hulking black machine. The red one slammed its saber down against the GOUF's sword and pressed the blue mobile suit back, just in time for the black one to come up from behind, beam rifle ready—

Emily threw herself into the fight, stabbing forward with her saber to slash the Proto Savior's beam rifle in half. The two Gundams backed away and Rau's GOUF landed hard behind the Eclipse—and Emily ground her teeth as that pilot appeared again on her auxiliary monitor.

"Well well! I was wondering when _you'd_ show up," Varder Ehrmacht cackled. "And you even brought us a new toy!"

The Proto Gaia charged with a beam saber slice that slammed against the Eclipse's sword. The GOUF swept in from behind, sword blazing—only for the Proto Savior to shower it with firepower and drive it back. Emily surged forward and sent the Gaia reeling with a hard knee to the chest—as she closed in for the kill, the Savior thrust its shield into the path of the Eclipse's beam sword, spoiling the blow. The Gaia whirled around and charged in from behind, beam saber held high—

Emily clenched her teeth and fired the Eclipse's thrusters to throw her mobile suit to the side, dodging the Gaia's finishing strike—and with a crash, she slammed her sword down against the Gaia's shield and sent it stumbling away.

"Well," Lilith said with an approving smirk, "that's not too bad."

Emily glared back. "You have no idea."

—

Rattling under a volley of missiles, the Destiny Gundam whirled through the smoke and came down with a crash onto a Blaze ZAKU Warrior struggling to hold the Gundam at bay, and sliced it in half with the Arondight. Shinn charged through the ZAKU's flaming wreckage and brought his sword down again; the Slash ZAKU Phantom in front of him desperately blocked the blow with its beam axe, leaving the two mobile suits struggling together amid flying sparks.

Shinn glanced over his shoulder. "Stella!"

Beams came slicing down from above and the Gaia Gundam roared into the fight with a scream from Stella. The ZAKU backed away and tried to return fire with its beam Gatlings—but too late, as the Destiny slashed it in half instead.

"Stella, fall back and use the sniper rifle," Shinn instructed. "I'll—"

Another flurry of beams sliced through the battlefield—but this time a squad of Strike Daggers from Copernicus's defense force moved in, beam rifles blazing.

"Are they allies?" asked Stella.

"Something like that," replied Shinn. "Jesus, took them long enough—"

The Strike Daggers moved in—but one of them immediately exploded, speared through the chest on a beam shot from nowhere. Shinn blinked in surprise and scanned the skies, just in time to catch a DOM Trooper come streaking out of the sky with a quartet of ZAKUs at its flanks. The DOM leveled off the Barrus cannon in its right hand and the Gigalauncher in its left and opened fire, forcing Shinn back on the defensive—and the ZAKUs swept down like hawks to shower the Daggers with beam fire and blow away two more of their number.

"Well, maybe you guys _won't_ be any help," Shinn growled. The DOM rushed in with a beam barrage that forced the Destiny back behind its beam shield—and as it passed by, he whipped around and cut the Barrus cannon in two with his sword. Undeterred, the DOM wheeled around with its beam saber drawn and the two mobile suits came together with a crash. "Stella, take care of the ZAKUs while I deal with this guy!"

—

"I'm surprised that a great Coordinator war hero like you would side with these _vermin,_" screamed Rudolf as the GOUF Ignited's sword slammed down against the Infinite Justice's beam saber. "After who your father was and the things you did in the war, I would think you'd be on our side!"

Athrun ground his teeth as the two mobile suits struggled against each other. "Let me guess, you think wiping out the Naturals is a good idea too?"

The GOUF surged forward and threw the Infinite Justice back. "That is the fate of all inferior species!" Rudolf roared, and the GOUF charged with a furious sword hack. Athrun darted aside, beam saber ready, and whirled around to aim at the GOUF's waist—but it turned to jam its shield into the saber's path and deflect the blow.

"'Inferior species,' huh?" muttered Athrun. "Is that why our birthrates dropped to unsustainable levels among the third-generation Coordinators? Is that why we got wiped out by that 'inferior species?'" The two mobile suits darted apart and the GOUF deployed its left-hand heat rod, only for the Justice to slice it in two. "Spend enough time here, on Earth, among people who suffer the same as the Coordinators did, and you'll understand just how wrong you are!"

"_No!_" shrieked Rudolf, and the GOUF came back down with a punishing two-handed sword blow and sent the Justice skidding back through the dust. "I am faster, smarter, stronger, healthier, more resilient, better in every way than one of those Natural scum!" He brought the sword back down against the Justice's saber. "We Coordinators possess in us the very best qualities of all humankind—qualities only a handful of the un-evolved _ever_ managed to obtain, qualities that now inhabit an entire people! You will _not_ tell me that we are no better than those _subhumans!_"

Athrun scowled as the GOUF's monoeye flashed furiously at him. "Yes, you do possess all those qualities," he said, "especially the hatred!"

Rudolf gnashed his teeth and attacked again, the Justice parried the blow, and the two mobile suits returned to their swordfight.

—

A wave of beam shots lanced out of the sky and forced Trojan's DOM Trooper to dive to the right. From above, a pair of Slash ZAKU Warriors lined up behind the charging GOUF Ignited to deflect Trojan's return fire with their shields, and the GOUF rammed head-on into the DOM with its shoulder. Trojan yanked the controls back and sent the DOM staggering away from the GOUF's sweeping sword blow.

He glanced up at the two ZAKUs even as the GOUF's sword came down against the DOM's rifle-mounted sabers. The ZAKUs were moving towards something else, built into the lunar surface—

"The hell are _they_ doing?" Trojan muttered, but turned his attention back towards the GOUF as the blue mobile suit surged towards him again. "Lily, the ZAKUs!"

"I'm trying!" Lily wailed, and up above the Vent Savior slalomed through a storm of beam fire from two more ZAKU Warriors. "What's gotten into these guys anyways?"

Trojan opened his mouth to answer, but the GOUF slammed him back with an overhead sword blow. He staggered backwards and brought up his Gigalauncher to fire back, showering the GOUF with beam blasts. It darted to the right and Trojan followed after it—

A moment later, a burst of fire flared up in a space next to a metal structure on the lunar surface—and with a flicker, two more Blaze ZAKU Warriors suddenly materialized, standing around a tall metal cylinder attached to the structure—the structure that Trojan suddenly recognized as a vent that was part of Copernicus's environmental systems, with access to the air circulation network.

"Mirage Colloid?" he muttered. "What are they trying to hide?"

"What's _that_ thing?" Lily exclaimed; the Vent Savior ducked down closer to the shots, even as one of the new ZAKUs broke off from the cylinder to shower the incoming silver mobile suit with missiles and the other furiously set to work on the cylinder's base. Trojan ducked around from the GOUF and whirled around to face the cylinder—but the GOUF snaked its heat rod around the DOM's Gigalauncher and yanked it free from Trojan's hand, forcing him to spin around again and defend himself. Lily darted by the cylinder with the zoom activated. "Trojan, what does 'GB' stand for?"

"Hell if I know," Trojan grunted, and fell into a stance to take the GOUF on again—before a shock of realization ran through him. "Wait...GB, on a cylinder, attached to a vent for the circulation system...?" He jetted to the side and stole another magnified glance at the cylinder—and the skull and crossbones symbol on its side. "Oh no..." He slammed a hand onto the transmit button and hoped it wasn't too late.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"_Nerve gas?_" Meyrin Hawke yelped, and the words roared through the _Minerva_'s bridge and hung like a cloud of the poison itself. "Trojan, are you sure?"

Trojan's face was replaced on the auxiliary screen by an image of the uncovered cylinder, skull and crossbones and all. "That's what it looks like, and I don't think we can afford to take chances."

"Captain, more heat signatures!" Burt interrupted, and the tactical map flickered to life with dots representing mobile suits rising out of nothingness—all of them, all over the crater around Copernicus, standing by those towering cylinders on the lunar surface.

"Oh my God," Roxy started, "are those all gas containers?"

"They must have used Mirage Colloid to sneak their troops onto the surface," Abbey continued.

"And the other half to distract us," Meyrin finished. "Oh, God..." She straightened up in her chair and willed herself calm. "Order the mechanics outside back into the ship. Chen, charge the Tannhäuser. We'll blast our way through the rubble and attack the ZAFT forces ourselves."

"But we would risk damage to the ship—" Chen began.

"I don't care," Meyrin shot back. "Roxy, tell our pilots to ignore the enemy mobile suits and destroy those cylinders instead, before they can start—"

The auxiliary screen flashed to life with Meriol's pale, shaken face on it. "Captain Hawke, do you see what they're doing out there?"

Meyrin pinched the bridge of her nose and pushed the horror and anger back down. She would have to stay calm—that was what her crew needed, what Meriol needed, what everyone needed. "I know. I had no idea they would go this far." She looked back up. "We're going to blast our way out with the Tannhäuser. What can you do?"

"I'm still stuck in the hangar," Meriol answered, "but if we can get these civilians somewhere safe, we can launch the mobile suits."

"The safest place is probably aboard the _Ortygia_," Abbey spoke up.

"Probably," Meyrin agreed. "Just focus on getting people evacuated. We'll do what we can to stop the gas."

She glanced at the bridge display, and the dozen cylinders standing tall and terrifying over the gray dust of the Moon.

_Whatever it is we _can_ do..._

—

All at once, the agony and fear and suffering of ten million people in the vast subterranean cityscape of Copernicus slammed into Emily's consciousness and sent her back on her heels—just in time for the Proto Savior to slam her back with a knee to the Eclipse's chest.

Emily's head swam. All those people, seized in fear as they suddenly died—as they breathed in poison gas and began to suffocate—clawing at themselves, gasping for breath, dying in scores—her blood ran cold and her muscles froze—

"So I guess the cat's out of the bag," Varder said with a laugh, and the Proto Gaia charged in with its saber held high. "Pretty impressive, eh, Miss Angel of Death?"

The words ripped up through the cloud of horror and Emily jammed the controls back and jetted away from Varder's victorious saber swing. He surged after her and followed it up with another swing—a blow easily blocked by the Eclipse's beam sword.

"You—you're killing them all!" Emily shouted. The death swirled around her again, clouding her concentration and choking her mind. Her stomach churned and she struggled to focus on the enemy, through the flickering sparks. "Why—?"

"Why?" Varder cackled, and he sent the Eclipse reeling with a swing. "It's a simple fact of warfare, honey. The Alliance's advantage has always been with its industrial capacity and its massive population relative to ours." He grinned back, and Emily's world began to sway. "We're just reducing them. And if it means ridding the world of some vermin, well, that's just a nice little bonus."

The Proto Savior roared in from behind and slammed into the Eclipse with a bone-jarring crash. Emily fought against the horror rising above her consciousness and drowning her thoughts—and the voice—

"I've had enough of this," Lilith growled, and the Proto Savior backed away and rose up into the black sky. "Varder, finish her off. We have work to do."

"Always business with you," Varder sighed, and the Proto Gaia leveled off its beam rifle. "Well, it's been fun."

Emily squeezed her eyes shut. Her father was there, stark and clear among the darkening cloud of death—still her overlord, still holding her reins, and after all this she was still the perfect little weapon he had wanted. She fought the Alliance—and she was still the very killing machine he had wanted. The very killing machine whose first victim had been her own mother. And now, surrounded by all this agony and horror—

_She will be our angel of death._

Emily screamed in pain and the seed burst.

The Eclipse charged forward with a blaze of afterimages and a brilliant flash of light from the Voiture Lumiere—and Varder had barely enough time to blink before the Eclipse had torn his beam rifle from his hand and sent the Proto Gaia crashing into the dust with a tooth-rattling kick to the face and another to the torso. The Proto Savior fired a cloud of missiles from its Ratha pack's arms—but the Eclipse merely waved at them, white energy dancing around the cockpit, and sent them veering off course and into the ground. Lilith gaped in disbelief—just before the Eclipse was there to slam its beam sword down onto the Proto Savior's shield.

Emily ground her teeth as she pushed away the pain and horror with nothing but pulsing, burning fury.

_She will be our angel of death._

—

"Shinn," Stella's voice whispered fearfully through the Destiny's cockpit, "are they...are they all gonna die...?"

Shinn barely heard Stella as his mind swayed, swamped by the vortex of death spiraling up from Copernicus. He looked up at the feeling of danger and jammed his sword into the path of the DOM's upturned beam saber, then flung the purple mobile suit back with all of his Gundam's might.

"You bastards," Shinn snarled, and charged forward as the ZAFT mobile suits began to pull back behind a curtain of beam fire. "You _bastards!_" The Destiny darted around their fire, afterimages filling the sky. "_You goddamned bastards!_"

The Gaia leveled off its rifle and opened fire to pick off one of the ZAKUs; the survivors backed away and the DOM charged forward with its saber raised towards the Destiny.

Shinn sent his Gundam roaring forward with a scream. "_I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS!_"

The DOM opened fire with its scattering beam cannon—but the Destiny lurched to the side in a flurry of afterimages and sawed the DOM in two at the waist with its beam sword. The Gundam crashed down into the dust as the DOM exploded, and Shinn turned his furious, tear-clouded eyes towards the remaining ZAKUs—backing away as they were under Stella's murderous beam fire.

"All you've done here since coming back is slaughter people," Shinn snarled, "and I won't let you anymore!"

—

Athrun forced the pain out of his consciousness as he traded sword blows with Rudolf's gleaming GOUF Ignited, and struggled to ignore the pilot's victorious cackling.

"So, are you impressed with _Hell's Wind?_" Rudolf laughed, and the GOUF brought its sword down with a crash onto the Infinite Justice's beam saber, as though punctuating its point. "Doesn't it just _take your breath away?_"

Athrun scowled and slammed the Justice's knee up into the GOUF's chest; Rudolf grunted under the blow and darted back, before he leveled off his mobile suit's left arm and showered the Justice with beam bolts.

"I can't really see the Coordinators as some kind of superior being when they do shit like _this,_" Athrun snarled back; the Justice somersaulted over the GOUF's shots and came back down with an overhead saber swing that was quickly blocked by the GOUF's beam sword, and the two mobile suits exchanged blows again.

"And _I_ can't abide a race that destroys a superior people in the name of 'progress' and 'cleansing,'" Rudolf shot back, "so I guess that just makes us even!" The GOUF jammed its sword upward to stop the Justice's saber swing towards the golden mobile suit's head. "Like you have any right to decry us for this! As grisly as it may be, the Naturals have proven time and time again that they only want to destroy us. This is the only way us Coordinators will ever have peace and security." His lips twisted into a wicked smile. "You should know that better than all of us. You've been here for the height of Blue Cosmos's open season on our people."

The GOUF planted its feet into the dust, and Athrun's eyes darted back and forth, seeking an opening. "I have been here for all that," he said, "and I've seen Naturals do terrible things to Coordinators." The Justice brought its knee up again, into the GOUF's chest; and then, with a crash, the Justice surged forward and drove the GOUF back with a punishing series of saber blows. "And I've also seen Naturals sacrifice their lives to protect the same Coordinators that _you_ abandoned to Blue Cosmos!" The Justice ducked beneath one of the GOUF's frantic sword swings and slammed its shoulder into the golden machine's chest to throw it back—and then sent it reeling with another devastating sword blow. "So don't tell _me_ what I should know about Naturals and Coordinators!"

Rudolf snarled in fury and lashed out with his right-hand heat rod; Athrun slashed it in two with his beam saber and went back on the attack.

—

"You just don't understand!" Varder Ehrmacht roared as the beam sabers clashed and he struggled to keep up with the blindingly-fast Gundam Eclipse. "No Natural could ever understand what we've been through!" The Proto Gaia fell to one knee and jammed its saber up to stop a devastating sword blow from the Eclipse. "The Naturals have been trying to destroy us for decades! With the Requiem, they came closer than ever before to actually succeeding! What are we _supposed_ to do?"

Emily drove the Proto Gaia forward with a wordless scream and then rammed the Gundam hard in the chest with her machine's right knee. Varder backpedaled desperately as the Eclipse closed in—only for the Proto Savior to let loose a storm of firepower between the two combatants and shoot by in mobile armor mode.

"Varder, pull back!" Lilith shouted. "Back on top!"

The Proto Gaia vaulted off the ground and over a sweeping sword strike from the Eclipse, and Emily rocketed after it. The red mobile suit slammed down onto the Proto Savior's back and the two mobile suits rocketed around with a punishing barrage of firepower. Emily ground her teeth and hurled the Eclipse through it, afterimages flying—and the two Gundams' beam blades crashed together again in a shower of sparks.

"The Coordinators have always had to fight for their right to exist," Varder snarled, as the Proto Savior wheeled around again. "They tried to kill us all with nuclear weapons during the Valentine War and the beginning of the Junius War! They actually _did_ with the Requiem! Why should we not take what's rightfully ours and make sure they can never threaten us again?" The blades clashed again. "_Tell me!_"

The Proto Savior fired its plasma cannons and forced the Eclipse on the defensive; Emily scowled up at the two mobile suits and darted through the blasts to pound the Proto Gaia's saber and shield with her beam sword.

"You bunch of murderers," she growled, "killing people like they're all the same..."

"That's a laugh, coming from the likes of you!" Lilith shot back. The Proto Gaia flung the Eclipse away, just in time for the Proto Savior to pummel Emily's beam shields with beam fire.

"If you think we should have just stayed at Mars, you're sorely mistaken!" Varder added, and rushed in atop the Proto Savior to slam the Eclipse back with its saber. "You damned Naturals can't keep us from humanity's only home!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_

"Vulture Two reports that the gas has reached the lower residential sectors," Glasgow reported from his chair by the captain's seat, glancing across the mapping console towards Graves. "And Banshee One says that nobody has yet tried to retake the controls for the circulation system."

Leaning back in his chair, Graves flashed a victorious smile. "Then it all went pretty much flawlessly," he said with a shrug. "Tell Banshee One to destroy the circulation controls and lock the system open. Vultures will abandon the cylinders—they're pretty much empty by now anyway—and return to the fleet. I think our work here is done." He idly stared down at his fingernails. "Nasty stuff, that Sarin. Kills in about a minute if you get enough of it in there—and we injected enough to kill ten million people. They must be almost all dead by now."

Glasgow looked back towards Copernicus, bearing some small scars of the battle on its outer surface and studded with empty gas canisters. He hated to think of what was going on inside. Nerve gas did awful things to people, and Copernicus had always been fairly neutral. He couldn't really say they deserved this.

He shook his head. There was no such thing as neutrality. Not in this war.

"Order all units to retreat at once. Fire the flares and activate the blinders. Once we get our troops back aboard, set course at top speed for our next target." He glanced back at Graves. "The operation seems to have gone flawlessly. Congratulations, Mr. Graves."

Graves grinned back. "It's what I do."

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Nana Buluku**_**, orbit of the Moon**

The engines of the _Nana Buluku_ hummed through the ship's hull, into the bridge, into Gerhardt von Oldendorf's brain as he sat back in the right-hand chair and waited. The noises of the bridge of a warship on the move faded away as his mind churned. So that little plan had not been an unmitigated disaster—it had only been a _mitigated_ disaster. How comforting.

He cracked open his eyes and glanced at the other seat, where Montgomery, the Phantom Pain officer with the curly mustache, was handing out orders. He spared a sheepish look towards Gerhardt. "We're almost out of range from Copernicus now, sir," he said. "Soon we'll be able to drop the Colloid."

Gerhardt waved it off. "Just as well. The ZAFT forces seem to be heading in the opposite direction, towards Sagan City." He peered out the bridge windows, over the lifeless surface of Earth's faithful celestial companion. The Alliance had sent troops from Arzachel and the newly-rebuilt base at Ptolemaeus, but the ZAFT fleet would be long gone—towards Posidonius crater, the home of the major manufacturing centers of Sagan City. Their loss would seriously cripple Actaeon Industries, as the loss of Copernicus's industrial sector would put a dent in the bottom lines of the Fujiyama Company and Azrael Conglomerate—in fact, every major supplier for the Alliance military had factories at Copernicus. The Alliance would not begin to feel the pain—not yet—but its manufacturers would.

But the real damage of this attack...that was yet to be calculated. Lord Djibril would have to explain to the Earth Sphere why ZAFT had just been able to slaughter the ten million residents of the supposedly neutral Copernicus with so little resistance.

To think all that had happened, and he had _still_ let Emily get away.

_Well_, he reminded himself, _there will be other chances._

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Silence reigned in the _Minerva_'s bridge as the auxiliary screens showed camera pans of Copernicus's interior—and the bleeding, filthy corpses strewn throughout the streets. Cars smashed, bodies twisted into hideous poses, fires burning, all victims of an invisible cloud of death. The _Minerva_'s bridge crew watched in silent horror.

"Um, captain," Burt started quietly with a wavering voice, "that ZAFT fleet is retreating behind blinders and combat flares."

Meyrin swallowed hard and turned away from the image of a dead woman with a foaming mouth and a face that looked too much like Luna's for her to bear. "Follow their course," she ordered softly. "Chen, is the Tannhäuser ready?"

"Y-Yes ma'am."

"Then fire it and clear out that debris in front of us."

The _Minerva_ rocked as the Tannhäuser sliced through the wreckage blocking the port's opening, and with a thundering blast, the way was clear and the debris rained down on the _Minerva_'s hull. Meyrin peered through the smoke, at the dozen empty gas cylinders standing sentinel over the dead lunar landscape, and the dead cityscape underneath.

"Burt, do you have a course projection yet?" she asked.

"A very rough guesstimate," Burt answered. "Based on the heading they're taking right now, they could be heading towards another major lunar city. Possibly Sagan City. But that might change."

Meyrin cringed and flipped a switch on her armrest, and the pictures of horror on the auxiliary screen were immediately replaced by a pale-faced Meriol on the _Ortygia_. "Meriol, is everyone on your end alright?"

Meriol paused, and Meyrin could tell by her red eyes and wavering voice that it was even worse. "The _Ortygia_'s crew is fine. They were all wearing space suits. But the civilians trying to evacuate..." She shook her head. "I should have let them on. I shouldn't have made them wait. I could have—"

"Don't start that," Meyrin interrupted, willing her voice to be firm. "Don't feel guilty. Neither of us anticipated that ZAFT would go this far." She shook her head and crushed the voice of doubt in her own mind. "They attacked convoys and Gagarin City was a Eurasian colony full of refugees and factories, but this..."

Meriol rubbed her eyes and straightened up. "I know," she said quietly, and seemed to be pushing down the emotion herself. "I know. It's just...we had to watch them die, Meyrin. And...I don't think I can forget that."

"And you shouldn't. None of us should." She glanced back up at Burt. "Are they still on course for Sagan City?"

"So far."

"Alright." Meyrin turned back towards the auxiliary screen. "Listen to me, Meriol. That ZAFT fleet is pulling back, and they may well be heading for another lunar city to do the same. The _Minerva_ is faster. We can beat them to Sagan City or wherever else they're going, but we need to get going now. And we need your help. Stay in touch and join us from behind them, so we can tear them apart before they can do this to another city."

There was silence for a moment before Meriol nodded. "Right. Of course. We'll launch as soon as we can, and follow your lead."

Meyrin smiled back grimly. "Then we'll get going. _Minerva_, prepare to depart."

—

The unmistakable signal of the emotional hurricane churning inside Emily von Oldendorf led Rau to that comforting metal womb of self-pity and angst, the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck. It seemed to be the favored place for the _Minerva_'s less emotionally stable youngsters to go suffer or something, and right now Emily was there, watching the lunar mountains and mares slide by as the _Minerva_ glided over the dust towards what Captain Hawke believed was ZAFT's next target on the Moon.

Obviously, things had worked out perfectly.

Emily jumped at the sound of his boots hitting the deck, and he smiled reassuringly at her. "I hear you had quite an ordeal in Copernicus."

"S-Something like that."

"Something like that, eh?" he asked. "I'm told you were captured by your father. Are you alright?"

Emily glanced up at the stars awkwardly. "I guess."

"You're unhappy. Is it all from the battle?"

"No, it's..." She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. "The things he said to me."

"Oh?"

"He said...that I'm exactly what he wanted me to be. That..." She rubbed a tear from her eyes. "That it's my fault my mother died." She looked back up at Rau. "He made my mother have me even though she couldn't take it, and she only lasted a few years before she died. From the strain of having us and raising us. And..." She looked down at her hands. "And look at me now."

Rau nodded solemnly. "You wanted to make the power he gave you your own," he said, "but in doing so, you had to become exactly what he wanted you to be." He thoughtfully stroked his chin. "Although it's curious that he's pleased to see you've become a hero of the Resistance against the Alliance. He must be a very ambitious man."

"He is," sighed Emily.

"Well," Rau said, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, "there's still a way forward, you know." She looked up at him again, and by the pleading look in her eyes, Rau knew he was on the right track. "If he wants you to destroy the Alliance for him, then fine. You can do that. You know well how evil they can be. And you've just seen how evil ZAFT and the Coordinators can be." He shrugged. "What solution is there left but to destroy them both?"

They both looked at the screen mounted over the observation deck's door as it flickered to life—and Rau barely contained his grin.

_Ah, Valentine, you never let me down._

On the screen, he instantly recognized Messiah's control room, with the stately Valentine Sunogachi behind a raised podium emblazoned with the ZAFT logo—and soldiers packed onto the command dais, the desk and chair retracted for more floor space.

"Speak of the devil," Rau said with a smirk, and gestured up towards the screen. "If you need anymore convincing, Emily, then watch this."

"People of the Earth Sphere," boomed Valentine Sunogachi, "you have no doubt heard by now the news from the Moon. But if you have not, then allow me to inform you that at this hour there is nothing left alive within the city of Copernicus. Earlier today, forces under my command attacked Copernicus with poison gas, destroying the population and the industrial sector that provides your evil little leaders with their weapons. My forces were thorough; there is nothing left.

"This now is the fate that awaits all those who side against us with the Alliance. We demand security at Lagrange Point 5 for our people; reparations for what was done to them on the sixteenth of January, CE 74; unilateral disbandment and disarmament of the Earth Alliance and OMNI Enforcer; wholesale reduction of the militaries of every nation on Earth; and the immediate surrender of all strategic weapons. Until every one of these conditions is met, we will draw from the Earth Sphere blood and pain and treasure to match what we have lost. Don't think I am bluffing; ask the people of Copernicus about _that_."

Emily blanched. "She's just going to kill everyone until we make her dictator?"

"Not very subtle," agreed Rau with a grin.

"Look into yourselves and you will see that what we demand is just," Valentine continued. "For sixty years we have suffered your cruelty. You blamed us for disease, persecuted us across the Earth, and drove us into space. You tried to starve us to death in our own colonies. You tried to destroy us with nuclear weapons, on three separate occasions in two different wars. And then, the Requiem. Look into yourselves and you will see why at last we have struck back in kind.

"For we fear you have forgotten what you have done to us. You drove us off to Mars and thought that was the last of us—but we have returned, and we are here to share with you the horror you brought upon us, until the scales of justice are balanced and our people are secure." She spread out her arms. "Look upon us, people of the Earth Sphere, and tremble in fear! We have returned from hell to deliver divine judgment upon you! We bear on our bodies and souls the scars of sixty years of oppression and cruelty! We have not forgotten—_you_ have! But we will make you—"

She thrust her fist into the air, as did the soldiers before her.

"_REMEMBER!_"

—

To be continued...


	16. Phase 16: Becoming Evil

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 16 - Becoming Evil

—

**April 30th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, the Moon**

The chants of the soldiers echoed through the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck and bounced their way into Emily's brain. She took an anxious step back.

"Is that the enemy...?"

At her side, Rau merely shrugged. "To be fair, what can you expect from a group of people who have endured the horrors they have?"

"But that doesn't mean they can just slaughter everybody for it!" Emily protested, and gestured angrily at the Moon. "They're being just as bad! What's the difference?"

"There is none," Rau agreed, "which is why you can't hang your coat with either side. They both must be destroyed if there's to be peace." He smiled reassuringly. "Isn't that what Ms. McGriff told you?"

Emily looked back out the windows, towards the mountains. Of course that was what Selene had told her. Take the Eclipse's power and end the war. She had seen its power herself, twice now.

"I know you don't want this power," Rau said, and turned to leave, "but it's there regardless, and it's yours to wield. Why not do some good with it?"

The door slid open and Rau disappeared down the hallway, leaving Emily with her head in her hands and her father's voice echoing through her mind.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of the Moon**

"Good God."

Breaking the silence of the _Charlemagne_'s bridge and its gaping crew, Danilov tore his eyes away from the images of death in Copernicus. He'd already had his fill of corpses in the contortions of nerve gas poisoning, but the news couldn't seem to get enough.

Instead, he glanced over at the communication console. "Any word from headquarters yet?"

"No sir."

Danilov peered out the bridge windows and frowned, pushing the images from his mind. He was too professional to dwell on bodies—and that ZAFT unit was out there, fresh from having slaughtered ten million people in a neutral, affluent colony. They had escalated the war—so it was up to Danilov to bring the war to them. The _Charlemagne_ would annihilate them.

But the _Minerva_'s remaining mobile suits had been spotted in action against the ZAFT forces, and the _Minerva_ itself was apparently redlining its engines to get around the enemy fleet and beat them to Sagan City, by the Posidonius crater. What would they do? Danilov could already tell. They would never pass out an opportunity to mete out justice like that—especially if they had been there for the gassing itself.

And yet his ship's official mission was still to destroy the _Minerva_ on sight.

_Well,_ Danilov mused, _that may be what my orders say...but it's not what my _oath_ said._—

A somber silence hung like mist in the air of the _Charlemagne_'s crew lounge as the images scrolled by on the monitor of the streets of Copernicus. It didn't bother Sven in the least—but it did seem to rile up that damned little kid.

_You know you're bothered by this,_ the voice spoke up, and Sven ground his teeth in anger. _Hey, did you see that one kid with the silver hair? He looked kinda like you. Y'know, back when you were a human being._

_Shut up._

_It's pretty brutal, huh? All that young life, vibrant and excited and ready for whatever, cut down by some psychopaths with poison gas. And you don't feel even a teensy little bit bad about it?_

_Shut. Up._

_Not likely, pal!_

Sven turned around and stormed out of the crew lounge. He angled for his bunk, where he could bang his head against the wall until the voice left him alone without attracting unwanted attention.

The bodies were still there in his mind's eye, writhing in agony and clutching at their throats. But he was a soldier and he was supposed to do his job. He could not let sentimentality get the better of him. Not in this business. That was not how he had survived the Phantom Pain's ruthless training, in the days of the 81st Autonomous; that was not how he had survived throughout his entire career. To survive, on the battlefield and off, one had to be ruthless and cold. He could not afford distractions.

_You keep telling yourself that,_ the voice added, and Sven growled hatefully.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_**, orbit of the Moon**

"Those damned Coordinators," snarled Joaquin, drifting from his chair on the _Lucifer_'s bridge towards Ortega. "Get this ship on their tail immediately."

"We're following as fast as we can, sir," Ortega protested, "but the ZAFT fleet has a considerable head start on us. And," he called up an image on the auxiliary screen, and Joaquin frowned, "we've got _them_ to worry about too."

"What the hell is the _Minerva_ doing there?" Joaquin stroked his chin thoughtfully, disturbing ideas flitting through his mind. "They don't actually mean to stop this ZAFT force, do they?"

"They launched mobile suits to protect Copernicus, sir."

"For all the good _that_ did." Joaquin studied the map again. "The _Charlemagne_ is on its way too. What does Danilov think he's doing?"

"I think, colonel," another voice spoke up, "that Danilov is fighting our _real_ enemy."

Joaquin glanced over at the bridge doors and found Morgan Chevalier floating through with a steely expression.

"That marshmallow of an officer had better not forget that the _Minerva_ is no friend of the Alliance," Joaquin sneered. "And that goes for you too, Captain Chevalier. They are to be shot down the instant the ZAFT force is neutralized."

"Can we really afford that?" Morgan shot back. "I think between the two, ZAFT presents a bigger threat. The Resistance has never pulled off anything on this scale." He gestured angrily at the auxiliary screen. "They've killed almost twenty million people in less than a month. I think they should be the priority here."

"We will decide what's the priority, Captain Chevalier," Joaquin snapped, and turned back towards Ortega. "Take us to the Moon, immediately."

Ortega frowned. "If they're heading to Sagan City, we won't be able to catch up in time to protect the city."

"I don't care! Get us there, now!" He turned and pushed past Morgan with a scowl. "I won't let them shame me again..."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Copernicus, the Moon**

"...and then he jumped on top of the truck and they had a _fistfight!_"

Shinn Asuka watched with growing discomfort in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge as Lily excitedly described her Copernican escapades to a somewhat skeptical-looking Stella.

"That's dangerous," Stella pointed out.

"Yeah, but it was really cool!" countered Lily.

"Relatively speaking," Shinn added. "Personally, I remember Athrun driving like a maniac—"

"In his _really awesome car!_"

Stella blinked at Shinn for a moment. "Is Shinn okay?"

"I'm fine. It's nothing we haven't done before."

Lily immediately turned towards Shinn. "You mean you've fought gunfights in moving cars before?"

Instantly, Shinn's mind flashed back to a nasty stay in Havana two years ago, and a car chase that Sting and Auel had called "fun" and he had called "terrifying," all of which had ended in spending the night in a muddy creek. "Anyways," he said, "it wasn't all that fun, and," he frowned, "it _did_ get worse."

They all fell silent, and Shinn silently regretted killing the mood—but, really, how could any of them talk about Copernicus and their misadventures throughout the lively city and _not_ come to what had happened hours later?

He looked up sadly towards the ceiling and idly wondered if that too was somehow his fault.

—

It wasn't the fact that she was coming to see him again that bothered Athrun Zala as he worked in the _Minerva_'s computer room; it was that Viveka was even up at all. He glanced over his shoulder with a frown.

"Weren't you supposed to be in bed?"

Viveka smirked back. "You really think _I_ was going to just _rest?_"

"Guess not," Athrun agreed, and turned back towards the screen.

"So what are you doing?"

"Modeling future scenarios for gas attacks." He frowned as one of the models played themselves out in an Island 3 cylinder—and the effortlessness with which a cloud of poison gas could sweep through the colony and kill everyone inside once it was released. Indeed, it seemed like the only way to deal with a gas attack on this sort was to stop it before it could begin. Or hand out gas masks. "I should have anticipated this."

"The hell you say?"

Athrun shook his head. "I should have realized. We live in these airtight cylinders and cities with these complicated air circulation systems. I should have anticipated that someone would take advantage of that."

Viveka landed next to his chair and put her mechanical hand over his shoulder. "Are you seriously blaming _yourself_ for this?"

"No," Athrun answered, a bit taken aback, "but I'm not much of a soldier if I don't." He pointed at the screen and the green cloud expanding throughout the virtual O'Neill cylinder. "Not if we're going to have to prevent these things in the future."

"Who said you have to do it all by yourself?"

"It's one of the things that comes with responsibility." He pointed at the screen again. "I know Meyrin will want help trying to come up with a strategy to deal with this."

"But why are you putting it all on your shoulders?"

Their gazes met and Athrun shrugged. "It's motivational."

Viveka stared at him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed his lips, ignoring his surprised sputtering. She pulled away a moment later and turned to leave.

"What was _that_ for?" Athrun stammered.

"Just doing it now, while I still have a chance," she said, and drifted out the door.

—

They gathered around the mapping console on the _Minerva_'s bridge, a flat projection of the lunar surface arrayed before them, and Meyrin fixed her eyes on the blinking dots that represented the ZAFT fleet. Rau and Abbey stood next to her, peering down at the image; on the auxiliary screen, Kenaf Lucini watched them all with his characteristically bemused air.

"He's a wily one, that Graves," Lucini chuckled. "His MO is mainly to stand on the sidelines and direct rather than dirty his hands with combat. I've worked with him a few times himself."

"Then I'm sure you can tell us why he's working for ZAFT," Meyrin replied with a skeptical look. Lucini's smirk disappeared.

"As close as I come to it, Captain Hawke, I am not omniscient. But I'm sure there is a vast sum of money in it for Mr. Graves. He who has the largest pocketbook and the most interesting needs commands Leons Graves' loyalty—to the extent that the pocketbook and the interest last."

Abbey slapped her hands down on the mapping console. "Kenaf, just tell us something we can _use_."

"Excuse me, Vice Captain Windsor," Lucini answered with an upraised finger, "but my job is only to supply the information. It's your job to do something with it."

"Kenaf, do you know what it is they're having Graves do?" Meyrin cut in, hopping to stop a fight from brewing. "Is he directing the fleet, or the gassing operation, or what?"

Lucini shrugged. "I know that he is with the fleet and there's something going on there called 'Hell's Wind'—which I assume to be the gassing operation they just carried out at Copernicus. Whatever else he's up to, I can't tell you. Were I to venture a guess, I would say that he's in an advisory role, since much of his past work was in the lunar colonies and he would know the layout well. But that, as I said, is only a guess."

Meyrin sighed and scratched the back of her head, peering back down at the map. The ZAFT fleet was clustered around what looked like a second _Marseille III_ freighter—taking on supplies and replacing losses, no doubt. If the _Minerva_ could get in range, it would be the ideal time to strike...

But that's not what _her_ plan called for.

"I rather doubt ZAFT would put a mercenary in charge of almost a dozen warships," Rau spoke up suddenly. "Much less a Natural mercenary. And either way, I do not believe he will require exceptional tactical chicanery to defeat." He looked up towards the auxiliary screen. "Especially not if he is unaware of you, Captain Pistis."

On the screen and over Lucini's shoulder, Meriol Pistis nodded her agreement. "And as long as you guys can distract that fleet long enough, he'll stay that way."

"There's one other problem, though," Abbey pointed out, and laid a finger over the two blinking blue dots on the map. "The _Charlemagne_ and that _Archangel_-class from Arnhelm and Terminal."

Meriol frowned. "What could _they_ want?"

"Probably to destroy this fleet," Rau answered. "The attack at Copernicus was a challenge that Lord Djibril can no longer afford to ignore. No less than the finest of the Phantom Pain will be sent to destroy them."

Meyrin studied the map again and thought about the Phantom Pain—about that man in command of the _Charlemagne_. He had fought her ship to a standstill and forced her to retreat for her survival; she had never handed that ship a decisive defeat. But how would he react to this...?

—

"So," Trojan said quietly, "this was a pretty shitty day."

Sitting in the Eclipse's cockpit, Emily glanced up from her work on the mobile suit's console towards Trojan, leaning against the cockpit hatch jamb with his arms crossed. "I'm sorry you got dragged into that," she answered quietly. "I didn't expect to ever see _him_ again..." Gerhardt von Oldendorf's dark eyes tore through her mind again and she squeezed her own eyes shut. His words haunted her—that she was still exactly what he wanted, that she had killed her own mother—

"I'm guessing you guys have a history," Trojan said, and moved forward to lean over the cockpit console. "Wasn't much of a dad, I take it."

Emily looked back up at Trojan bleakly. "He turned me into a military project to make some kind of super-soldier," she answered.

Trojan blinked at her. "What? Um, really?" He scratched his head. "Wait, so you're, like, an Extended or something?"

"I might as well be," Emily sighed, and sat back with a groan. "It's...a lot to take in, I guess." She searched for words and mentally weighed how much she could really tell him—how much he would believe, how much he would tolerate, how much until he ran screaming for his mobile suit and never returned. And that last thought filled her with a mix of emotions she couldn't describe, but certainly didn't like.

Trojan fidgeted for a moment. "Well, at least he can't hurt you," he offered. "I mean, now you're the Angel of Death—"

"Please don't call me that," Emily interrupted, going tense. Trojan blinked at her again. "Just...don't call me that."

"Um...okay," Trojan stammered. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

"No you're not." He leaned forward again. "Seriously, what's going on? You can tell me."

Emily looked back up at him. "No. I can't. You'd never understand."

Trojan smirked. "I spent three years in the jungle with a crazy martial artist learning to do the physically impossible. Try me."

"No," Emily said, with this time with enough force to blow the smirk off Trojan's face, "you won't. Just drop it."

"A-Alright," Trojan said, and backed away. "Okay. I will."

Emily put her hands in her head and sighed as he left.

—

**May 1st, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

Everything was falling into place. Every piece, every move, every word—all of it was working as she had planned.

Valentine Sunogachi stood at the window of Messiah's control room—the one she liked best, for its sweeping view—and gazed at the debris. It was all that remained of the PLANTs, the shattered fragments of the Coordinator people's lives. And it was here, in the blasted remains of their homeland, that the blasted remains of their nation made their headquarters as they brought justice to the rest of the Earth Sphere.

She breathed in the feelings. Exultation everywhere, at the success of _Hell's Wind_—at the incredible blow this army of survivors had struck against the mighty Earth Alliance. At the blows already struck, and the eagerness about the blows yet to come. The breath of victory coursed through her.

But there was something else, pulsing underneath, that drew her in. That anger, once white-hot but now even closer, warmer, tightly wound. It had taken three years to take that raw, burning rage and mold it into something self-sustaining and purposeful. Rage with no purpose was little more than recklessness, and the violence such rage begat was simply wasteful. It had taken her three years and she had withstood a _coup d'etat_ and the conquest of those miserable Martians to forge from these survivors the pulsing cocoon of hatred that wrapped itself around her.

Valentine closed her eyes and threw herself into it. All that hatred, itching to be released; all that anger, at the most towering of all injustices the Coordinators had ever suffered; all that sorrow, regret, longing, pain, all of it swirling together in this simmering cauldron of her own making. Of course there were those with doubts—but in this world, those doubts vanished. They were not Newtypes, but they could not help but be subsumed by all this, and even those who doubted and faltered and hesitated were sucked back in and the dark thing within them all itched and craved for its release.

They were perfect, and they would bear her up as a goddess of a new world. A better world. A _worthy_ world. She stretched her senses deep into Messiah and found what she was looking for.

They would bear her up a goddess—and he would be her priest.

—

The _Fortuna_ stretched before Kira Yamato in Messiah's warship dock, and from his place on the observation deck, Kira ran his mismatched eyes over the hull of his flagship. With its checks complete and its crew impatient to get their next assignment started, he almost lost himself to their lust for battle, for glory, for vengeance.

But that was not a difficult craving to suppress, because all he had to do was think of what that assignment would be.

Commander Glasgow had pulled off the first stage of _Hell's Wind_ well enough, but there were complications. The _Minerva_ had shown up there and fought against him, and now it was moving to interfere. Likewise, the Alliance was launching ships—like that gigantic _Charlemagne_ he had spent so much time studying. He would have to go, to supervise the next phase and ensure its success—personally. After all, the strike at Copernicus had been partly for show. The strike at Sagan City, then at the massive factories of Theophilus and Humboldt—that was the real meat of this plan. If ZAFT could pull off those attacks, it might end this war now, and then the real work could begin.

He closed his eye and thought back to the other problem that had presented itself—that new Gundam the _Minerva_ had debuted at Terminal, with speed and skill beyond what any of ZAFT's soldiers had expected. Even with only half of its mighty Gundam team, the _Minerva_ had inflicted some frightful losses on Glasgow's mobile suit force—losses that had to be replaced.

Kira frowned at the thought, pulled out his cell phone, and put in a call to his office. "Kayla, gather all the information we have on that Angel of Death character for me."

"Yes sir," Kayla answered. "But Intel says we don't have much."

"Whatever we have," Kira answered, and turned his eye back towards the _Fortuna_. "I will need it."

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_**, the Moon**

It always comforted Rudolf Wittgenstein, to some small extent, to lay eyes on his gleaming golden GOUF Ignited mobile suit. It quite literally outshone the other mobile suits in the _Caernafon_'s hangar, and that was as it should have been. He wore on his lapel the emblem of FAITH, and he was one of the ZAFT Reds to boot. He deserved to stand out.

So why did thinking of that damned Athrun Zala make his blood boil?

Well, there were reasons for that—like how Athrun Zala had enjoyed all the prestige and heroism that he, Rudolf, deserved—and squandered it all when he turned out to be a race-traitor. Sympathy for the Naturals. What a ridiculous concept. They had lost any claim they had to Rudolf Wittgenstein's sympathy when they blasted the PLANTs out of the sky.

Rudolf looked over to the right of his own GOUF, passing over a silent ZAKU Warrior—and then ground his teeth in even more anger, at the white and violet Civilian Astray with the Gundam's face and the grinning serpent emblem on its shoulder.

Yes, the Naturals had lost his sympathy, and yet here he was, taking orders from one. What difference did it make that he was so knowledgeable about lunar cities and their defenses? Lunar cities were easily figured out by Coordinator minds, and their defenders were easily cut down by Coordinator reflexes and technology and skill. He whirled around furiously, back towards his GOUF, and pushed off the railing with his feet. What did they need _him_ for?

Athrun Zala might have had an answer, the bastard. Rudolf scowled. He might have had an answer, but that didn't make him _right_.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, the Moon**

"So even Kira Yamato is joining the fun."

Varder Ehrmacht drifted around his office with his laptop in hand and a smirk on his face. He glanced up towards his desk, where Lilith was floating just overhead, idly twirling a pen between her fingers. She blinked disinterestedly at him.

"Well _I_ think it's cool."

"As if," Lilith snorted. "What's he doing out here anyway? Afraid Glasgow's diaper will need changing or something?"

Varder made a face. "Wouldn't want to wish _that_ on anyone. No, he's coming to deal with the _Minerva_."

"I thought we were going to do that."

"Yeah, well, Vice Marshal's prerogative or something." He moved over towards Lilith, discarding the laptop, and gathered her into his arms with a smile. "Besides, if Yamato is running around with us, he'll get to see how awesome we are."

Lilith settled into Varder's embrace. "I thought we were given this assignment because he already knows we're awesome."

"Well, more awesome. Think about it, Lil. We put up a good showing in front of Kira Yamato and earn some brownie points with the brass. And if we wind up fighting that Angel of Death girlie again..."

"Awfully interested in her, aren't you?" chuckled Lilith. "Should I be jealous, or just creeped out?"

"Oh no, she's our ticket to glory," Varder answered, his eyes lighting up. "Glory, fame, power, prestige, money...we take her down and we'll be heroes, Lil. And then," he waved a hand contemptuously around his office, "no more of _this_."

Lilith turned herself around in his arms and rested her head on his shoulder. "I don't really mind _this_."

"Neither do I," agreed Varder, "but we can do better."

—

**Djibril Manor, Vermont, Atlantic Federation**

There were many instances when Lord Djibril truly despised meeting with his associates—and this was one of them. He sat in his screening room with a generous glass of wine in hand, direly contemplating an upgrade to something stronger, as his fellow leaders of Blue Cosmos railed.

"Lockheed-Martin just lost an entire factory complex, Djibril!" raged the bald and portly Lally McWilliams. "This isn't just a little bump in the balance sheets, we lost ten percent of our manufacturing capacity!"

On another screen, the long-haired Adam Vermilyea frowned. "Dassault-Dornier did not come out of this well either, Djibril. I think we've waited and played cat-and-mouse with the ZAFT fleet long enough. It's time to use the Requiem."

"Yes, use the Requiem!" Celestine Groht added with a pounding fist on his desk for emphasis. "We should have done that at the outset!"

"Gentlemen," Djibril cut them all off, "you are not privy to this information but suffice it to say that intelligence from Mars suggests that such steps will be insufficient. And if it will do no good to fire the Requiem at Messiah, I would rather not waste the energy and risk the relay points."

"Then what are you going to do?" demanded McWilliams. "Are you going to let them just get away with this?"

"Of course not," Djibril said, and reached the power switch. "I have other matters to attend to. I will speak to you again soon," and with that the screens went dark. He knocked back a mouthful of wine and scowled, around the bitter taste of the alcohol and the even bitterer taste of what ZAFT had done. The people were clamoring for retaliation just as his associates were—but some of them were equivocating. Some of them were quietly raising the point that it had been the Atlantic Federation that had fired the Requiem in the Junius War, not the Republic of East Asia or the South African Union or anyone else. At least Sunogachi did not seem inclined to respect such a distinction.

The click of combat boots on the polished metal surface brought his attention back and he glanced up in the darkened screens, at Misa Tsunomi's dim reflection.

"Look into the feasibility of assassination of a certain group of individuals," he said quietly, and then scowled at his own reflection in the screens. "I was careless..."

—

**Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

It had been a horrific scene to see at first, but as the news replayed footage of the devastation at Copernicus for what seemed like the millionth time, it had ceased to have any effect on Robert Meyers by now. Strange how constant images of death made one just get used to it.

He sat back in the chair in his office and pondered. There was only one way this could play out—and it already was, with people in the streets demanding a swift and brutal retaliation against ZAFT for what they had done to Copernicus.

But Robert Meyers understood the real language of these things, and in her own way and her own words, Marshal Sunogachi had just issued a challenge to Lord Djibril. He had to answer it, or risk his own legitimacy as President of the Alliance.

Not that his legitimacy as such rested on such solid foundations anyways. No, not after what he had heard from quiet poking around in the State Department. Premier Musashihara of East Asia was already trying to quietly edge away from Djibril and President Vasserot. Prime Minister Manuel of South Africa and President Schtorzmann of Eurasia were still ostensibly on Djibril's side, loyal toadies that they were, but in the face of ZAFT's brutality the Alliance's already-stressed seams showed some signs of further fraying.

Meyers could not help but admit that he too wanted to see ZAFT punished for what they had done. But he was no Blue Cosmos fanatic; he could suppress that urge. They were right to say that the Coordinators were a threat to human civilization, in more ways than they knew—but they were of no use. Djibril and his little puppet Vasserot were proof enough that three years of Blue Cosmos's open brutality had bred only a backlash—and now there were ten million corpses being pulled off the streets of Copernicus to stand in proof of it.

He sat back and thought over the aging, hunched person of Evander Vasserot, President of the Atlantic Federation—acting, of course, after President Copland's disappearance from office. That was an interesting loose end, but it was not in Meyers' radar yet. At least Vasserot had no Vice President of his own. That would make this all a little easier.

Meyers glanced up as he saw Seri Minamoto slip quietly into his office and shut the door behind her. "It's, err, it's done now, sir."

"Good," Meyers said, and glanced down at his computer screen—where, sure enough, the news websites were already starting to shudder to life with the news that the 89-year-old Pierre St. Michel, Senior Senator from the Province of Manitoba and President _pro tempore_ of the Atlantic Federation Senate, had unexpectedly passed away. But nobody would really be surprised that an 89-year-old man had up and bought the farm—and no one would know otherwise, because Seri was good at what she did. "Very good. Pierre wasn't on our side anyway, old bastard."

Seri fidgeted for a moment. "Sir, this plan," she protested, "it just...I don't understand it. All these rules and parliamentary tricks just confuse me, sir."

"That's what they're there for," Meyers answered with a smirk.

"But...I don't get it. I thought the president _pro tem_ was supposed to be the oldest?"

"By tradition. But we're just going to have to arrange a little break with tradition. Because, you see, he's also next in line for presidential succession after the Vice President and House Speaker, and that, dear Seri, is where _you_ come in."

Seri blanched. "I'm supposed to...?"

"Soon," Meyers said with a wolfish smile. "And then, no more."

"No more," Seri repeated quietly.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"We've got mail," Roxy spoke up suddenly into the silence on the _Minerva_'s bridge, startling everyone. Meyrin tried not to look too annoyed as she smoothed out her coat. A moment later the auxiliary screen flickered to life—and Meyrin blinked in surprise at the sight of Chiao Xu, on what looked like a spaceship's bridge, with Joseph Copland standing over his shoulder. "Hey, it's the boss!" Roxy exclaimed.

"Chiao Xu, sir," Meyrin said with an awkward salute, "what's the occasion?"

"I understand you're in pursuit of the ZAFT fleet that just attacked Copernicus," he said, and Meyrin nodded. "Do you intend to destroy them?"

Meyrin blinked again. "Of course, sir. They're on course for another lunar colony. We can't let them do this again."

"I see," Chiao Xu said with closed eyes. "Then I must inform you of a change in your battle plan." He looked back at her again, and she felt her blood go cold as she guessed what he was about to say. "We are aboard the _Alexandria_, on our way to the Moon to meet with the commander of this ZAFT fleet and attempt to negotiate a ceasefire."

"What?" Abbey cried.

"Sir, that's suicide!" Meyrin added. "They—you heard Sunogachi's speech, right? They're not giving quarter to anyone, and they're certainly not going to make an exception for you!"

"This is above your level of knowledge," Chiao Xu said firmly, "but I have been in contact with ZAFT since before they arrived in the Earth Sphere. Our negotiations are ongoing—but I will have access that no one else has, and I must take this opportunity to avert another tragedy like Copernicus."

Meyrin looked helplessly up at Copland, seeing by his expression that he agreed entirely with her—but was keeping his mouth shut. "But sir, if those negotiations fail, your life will be in jeopardy and they'll still attack their next target."

"That doesn't matter. I must try."

Abbey stood up in disbelief. "Chiao Xu, sir, what makes you think you _can_ negotiate with them? That they even want to talk? You would be putting your life at risk for nothing!"

At his side, Copland shifted uncomfortably and looked down at the aging leader. "The _Alexandria_ is prepared to defend itself," he spoke up.

"And if I can end this crisis with negotiation before anymore lives are needlessly lost, then so much the better," added Chiao Xu.

Meyrin looked between the two men with something between outrage and horror churning inside her. "But they just gassed ten million people to death and bragged about it on worldwide television!" she sputtered. "What makes you think they're going to _talk?_"

Chiao Xu narrowed his eyes. "Do you disapprove of this course of action?"

"Of course I do, sir. You're just going to get killed—and that won't help anyone."

At that, the old man straightened up and seemed to draw himself in. "My negotiations with ZAFT have garnered me significant goodwill among their leadership," he answered curtly. "I am confident I will be in no danger."

Meyrin glanced over at Abbey anxiously. "Be that as it may, sir, we're going forward with our plan anyways. Because you may believe that ZAFT is willing to negotiate over this, but we don't."

"You will do what you think is right," Chiao Xu said. Copland smiled apologetically, and the screen went dark—and Meyrin groaned and put her head in her hands.

—

Being a Newtype was a real bitch sometimes.

That was the only thing Shinn Asuka could think of as Trojan Noiret appeared around a corner in one of the corridors and the full power of his emotional vortex reared its miserable head. He blinked and came to a stop at the side as the brown-haired boy passed by.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Trojan stopped short and blinked. "Err, what—?"

Shinn tapped the side of his head. "Newtype. Your angst becomes my angst, and that's not good for any of us, so what's going on?"

"Um...I'm not sure I want to talk about it," Trojan said awkwardly. Shinn frowned. "And, uh, Newtype? Really? Those are real?"

"Realer than I'd like. I'm not the only one here, so are you sure you don't wanna talk about it?"

Trojan heaved a defeated sigh. "It's Emily," he said, "she's being all...I dunno. Withdrawn. She's not really saying much to me." He shook his head. "I guess it has something to do with what happened at Copernicus."

"The gassing?"

"More than that. Like, when she got captured by her father. I guess he said something to her, or something? I don't know. She won't talk to me about it."

That was worrying. Shinn glanced in Emily's direction—because the storm of emotions was hard to miss to someone attuned to their presence. "I'll go talk to her," he said, and then stopped short as something else occurred to him. "And, um, thanks for telling me."

Trojan nodded apologetically as Shinn left, and his gaze followed the older man until he disappeared behind a corner.

—

"Smooth as ever with the ladies, Zala-boy," chuckled Roxy as she drifted through the _Minerva_'s crew lounge. On the other side of the table, Athrun frowned and stared down at his cup of coffee. "'course, I don't need to tell you that, since you came to _me_ for relationship tips, which just goes to show."

"Thanks," Athrun muttered.

"So you wanna bang Emily's sister but you don't know what goes on in her scary little female mind," Roxy went on, but was interrupted by Athrun's embarrassed spluttering.

"I don't want to—Jesus, Roxy, why did I even ask you about this?"

"'cuz you don't know shit about women," Roxy answered with a grin. "Seriously man. I don't really wanna get involved in your drama, 'cuz, I mean, I can go make my own if I want—"

"Please don't," Athrun cut in.

"—but y'know, if I've only learned one thing in my twenty years or so in this fine world, it's that nobody can read minds."

Athrun frowned. "So—"

"Newtypes don't count. And besides, the important thing here is that _she_ can't read _your_ mind. So if you really don't know where your relationship stands with her, you're going to have to tell her, and explain why."

"I don't know why," Athrun grumbled.

"Then you're gonna have to figure that out," Roxy said, crossing her arms to emphasize the finality, "and I can't help ya with that."

Athrun sat back and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. "Life was a lot less complicated when all I had to do was blow stuff up."

"Yeah, well, welcome to being human. My shift's over, I'm going back to the bridge." And with that, Roxy left, leaving Athrun to only stare at the ceiling and wonder.

—

Viveka glanced up in something between pain and annoyance at the sound of her door sliding open, and watched with interest as Lily Thevalley drifted across the threshold with something in hand.

"Um, hi," she said nervously, and extended a packet of painkillers to Viveka. "The doctor asked me to bring this to you. 'cuz, um, the wound probably hurts and—"

"Damn right it does," Viveka interrupted, and immediately swallowed one of the little white pills. "Thanks. Where did Em go?"

Lily squirmed for a moment. "I...dunno. She's being all moody and doesn't want to talk to anyone."

Viveka frowned and moved to get up, but then the lancing pain in her shoulder and the memory of the last time she had tried to go anywhere on these painkillers sent her head back onto the pillow. "Uh oh. What's going on?"

"I dunno. But I'm worried."

They were both silent for a moment and Viveka pondered the idea of Lily being worried about the younger Oldendorf. "You sure do like her. Any reason why?"

Lily jumped at the question and for a moment Viveka considered taking it back, before Lily decided to speak. "She...um, she's nice to me."

"She's nice to everybody."

"But _nobody_ is ever nice to me!" Lily protested. "Everyone on Arnhelm ignored me! But she didn't, and she's famous and stuff too, and she..." Lily trailed off for a moment. "She treats me like I exist."

With a grunt, Viveka slowly sat up and winced as the pain shot up her arm. "You're an Extended, right?"

"Yeah," Lily said, and Viveka could tell by the defeat in her eyes that there was far more to it than that.

"Then how'd you get here?"

"Got away from Althea on a training exercise. 'cuz some Alliance soldier helped me out, but he got killed, and," she shrugged, "here I am."

"Well then," Viveka said with a grin, "can't say nobody's ever been nice to you, huh?"

"I guess," mumbled Lily.

—

The haunting image of Lorelei von Oldendorf clawed at Emily's brain and pulsed in her heart, intertwined with Gerhardt's words—that he had so effortlessly led her to conclude that she had killed her own mother, the one parent who actually treated her like her child. The parent she wished hadn't died. Instead she had Gerhardt von Oldendorf, cackling with self-satisfaction at how his project had turned out.

Drifting on the interior observation deck—a frequent haunt, she idly realized—she hugged her knees to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. Viveka had said once that their mother had never really recovered from the stress of having a second child—that one had been hard enough. And as frail as she was...

She shook her head. Killing her mother and all she had to show for it was this stupid nickname and this destiny she didn't want. What did he mean that he was so pleased with the way she had turned out—as a mortal enemy of the Earth Alliance, the same Alliance in whose bureaucratic labyrinths he lived and thrived? Even when she fought against the Alliance, was she only just doing his bidding?

Trojan's presence flickered somewhere on the ship, and Emily rubbed the tears out of her eyes. He could never understand. Nobody could understand, except maybe the Extended, two of which were sedated and the other...well, that probably wasn't going to help.

But there was Rau. He seemed to understand. In fact, he seemed to have a possibility. And he certainly had a point. Neither side in this war was anywhere even remotely good. She had seen that all herself. The bodies the Alliance left at Volgograd, the infighting that brought down the Resistance at Novorossiysk, the cruelty that ZAFT had wreaked upon Copernicus...the world would be no better off if any of them won this war.

And that, after all, was what Selene had asked her to do. That was what she had to do with the Voiture Lumiere's power.

But what did Rau want her to do with it? The combatants in this war were all terrible—but so what? What could one pilot and one mobile suit do? What did he think should be done?

Emily blinked in surprise and looked up as she felt Shinn approaching, and watched as he floated through the observation deck door and closed it behind him.

"So here's where you've been hiding," he said, and landed deftly by the railing. "Nice place to sit and be miserable, huh?"

Emily pursed her lips. "Did Trojan ask you to find me?"

"Yeah, but I would've hunted you down whether he'd asked me or not." He turned towards her. "You can't hide it from me, Emily. What's going on? What happened in Copernicus?"

She closed her eyes and leaned back in the air, drifting away from him. "I don't think you'd understand."

"Of course I would." He paused for a moment. "I went through this sort of thing too. Gilbert Dullindal and my best friend, Rey, wanted me to be a soldier to bring about Dullindal's crazy new world. They just wanted me to be their incredible Newtype super-soldier."

"Then how did you get around it?" Emily eyed him carefully.

With a bitter smile, Shinn answered, "I ran away."

Emily closed her eyes and took in the presences of all those around her on the _Minerva_—her friends, her family, the people she could not bear to lose or betray—and knew she couldn't do that. She could never live with herself if she did that.

"Well, I still don't want to talk about it," she said. "I'll deal with it myself. I'll be okay."

Shinn arched a dubious eyebrow. "I'm going to know if you don't. You can't hide that from me."

"Then I'll just have to deal with it. It's my problem."

"You're one of us, Emily—so that makes it _our_ problem."

Emily rubbed the side of her head sadly. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because," she said quietly, "I'm not really one of you."

—

To be continued...


	17. Phase 17: Frozen

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note 1/27/2012: FFN ran an update, and as usual, it somehow completely cocked up the file uploading system, so I had to undertake some shenanigans to get this thing posted and I'm not entirely sure the formatting is coming out the way it looks to me like it will come out, because FFN works in mysterious, dickish ways like that. So if this thing is unreadable, well, please let me know and I'll do what I can.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Phase 17 - Frozen

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**May 2nd, CE 77 - ZAFT _Nazca_-class destroyer _Caernafon_, the Moon**

"I'm not doing this because we've lost faith in you, Glasgow," Kira Yamato spoke from the _Caernafon_'s auxiliary screen on the bridge, and Glasgow squirmed uncomfortably in the command chair. "But the fact remains that we have defeated the _Minerva_ before. We can do it again, especially now that their complement is weakened, and you can get the next phase over with."

"I know, sir," Glasgow answered, "I'm just...surprised that someone of your stature is joining an operation like this."

Kira arched the eyebrow over his good eye. "Oh?"

"It's not very...forward-looking, sir," protested Glasgow. "If you should be captured or this war should end in our surrender, then you'll be held responsible— "

"I'll be held responsible for everything bad that's ever happened in the Earth Sphere, including bad weather," Kira said with a dismissive wave. "We are not going to lose this war, Glasgow. We are playing for keeps. That's why we're even running this operation."

Glasgow nodded. "I understand, sir. We will await your arrival before we commence with the next phase."

The screen shut off and Leons Graves drifted up from the forward section of the bridge with a smirk. "Called onto the carpet by the boss himself, eh? Happens to the best of us."

"Don't you start," Glasgow grumbled. "Dammit, now I've got the Vice Marshal breathing down my neck too. Graves, there had better not be any mistakes."

Graves crossed his arms triumphantly. "You sell me short, commander."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Earth Alliance battleship _Charlemagne_, the Moon**

On the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, Danilov listened with half an ear as Joaquin raged on the bridge auxiliary screen. He had more important things to worry about than a careerist's fragile ego, like the fast-approaching Sagan City and the faster-approaching _Minerva_.

"Colonel Joaquin," Danilov spoke up at last, "ZAFT's _Minerva_-class ship is on the move for Sagan City as well. And intel picked up two more warships approaching the Posidonius region as well, likely Resistance. Between them, my ship, the _Minerva_, and this ZAFT fleet, it's going to be a hectic battle. I don't expect to destroy the entire ZAFT force— so you should put yourself in position to intercept survivors."

Joaquin seemed to purple in rage. "You mean to tell me you want me to clean up your leftovers?"

"Success is its own glory, colonel." He glanced over at the communication console. "We're beginning our approach. We will keep you posted. _Charlemagne_, out."

Danilov sat back with a grateful sigh as Joaquin's face vanished and instead fixed his eyes far ahead, over the lunar surface. Somewhere over the Moon's craggy horizon lay Posidonius Crater— and the forces of the world were converging there.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

With the day's work done and the Hail Buster returning to sleep in its hangar brace, Merau Seraux heaved a sigh and landed softly on the gantry in front of the mobile suit's cockpit hatch. It had been too long since she had used it in battle; she hoped her skills weren't getting rusty, because there was only so much a simulator could do. It wasn't real combat.

After all, people actually died in real combat.

Merau cast a glance to her right, where the Gale Strike stood by, and Erin stood in front of it, leaning heavily against the rail— but Merau knew that look on her face.

"So," she said, sliding over next to Erin and ignoring her startled look, "what's got you in angst mode?"

Erin rolled her eyes. "'Angst mode?'"

"Seems like everyone's doing it these days. So what's going on? Grey is off in the galley, by the way."

"W-What makes you think I care?"

Merau grinned back. "'cuz you've got that stupid look on your face that girls get when they think about boys they like."

"I'm not!" Erin sputtered. "Anyways, what business is it of yours?"

"Well, when people get like that, they tend to do stupid things like try to prove their power or whatever," Merau explained with a shrug. "And none of us who have been here since the ship's first launch are still here because we did something stupid. Not against the _Minerva_. So whatever problems you're having, it's best to get them all cleared up." She crossed her arms with finality. "Never know what's gonna happen tomorrow, after all."

Erin frowned back. "Tell that to Grey. Freaking has the hots for the enemy— "

Merau's grin disappeared. "No he doesn't."

"What?"

"It's not that Angel of Death girl that bothers him so much," Merau answered. "It's where it all happened. At Volgograd and Novorossiysk. He saw stuff he has never seen before. Never expected. Did things he can't forgive himself for."

"If you're talking about those 'massacres,'" Erin shot back, "I don't see why he believes them— "

"Of course he believes them," Merau interrupted. "We were there. We carried it out."

Erin blanched, and Merau moved to leave. "Y-You're joking," Erin stammered. "We wouldn't— "

"Oh, we would," replied Merau. "And you'd better get used to it, because they're gonna tell you to do it soon too."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

"It's ugly."

Working on a laptop by the Nix Providence's open cockpit hatch, Kelly Maynard looked up in surprise and found Mudie Holcroft there, drifting up, staring neutrally at the bulky Gundam's face.

"I'm sorry?"

"This mobile suit. It's ugly."

Kelly glanced at the Nix Providence and shrugged— no argument there. The original Providence, judging by the intelligence videos, had been a hulking but somehow still elegant beast on the battlefield. The Luna Project technicians had found a way to take the ethereal elegance of the original unit and screw it all up.

On the other hand, the Nix Providence carried an advanced form of the DRAGOON system that allowed use of remote weapons without those weird spatial awareness powers, so Kelly was willing to accept ugliness.

"It gets the job done," she defended with a shrug.

"They're all ugly," Mudie grumbled. Kelly glanced up inquisitively. "Even mine."

With that, Mudie pushed off from the Nix Providence's armor and headed off towards the hangar doors, leaving Kelly behind to shake her head. Mudie Holcroft was one of the original members of the Phantom Pain, there for the worst of its operations and the hardest of its existence. Of course she was crazy.

Everyone, she thought, was crazy.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Another day, another report secretly typed up in the Nebula Blitz's cockpit, and Travis Alterman was beginning to feel that damnable itch for combat. It had been too long. Only once had he gone out so far with this red beast— and that was far too little.

He sat back and pondered. The _Charlemagne_, heading to Sagan City— as was the _Minerva_, both of them presumably with the intent of destroying the ZAFT fleet that had just gassed Copernicus. It was true to type for the _Minerva_ and the _Charlemagne_ had its orders, but Ivan Danilov was not the sort of man to turn so easily from one foe to another. He was a gifted commander, but that conscience of his was going to get him into trouble.

And of course, there were politics to consider. Travis hated those— they were always so damned confusing— but he would hardly be much of an informant if he didn't. A strong cooperative showing between the _Charlemagne_ and the _Minerva_ would surely convince his superiors that the civil war was worth abandoning in favor of the war with ZAFT. Surely the Coordinators were the more pressing foe now.

He breathed out a sigh through his nose and scanned over his report. Of course, his superiors would need no convincing after Copernicus. Ten million filthy, contorted corpses spoke quite clearly.

All that remained, then, was to see what Danilov would do at Sagan City— and on that hinged more than the good captain knew.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Battleship _Minerva_, the Moon**

The door of the _Minerva_'s computer room slid open and Rau Le Creuset steeled himself for the coming barrage as Shinn Asuka made his way inside. The door slammed shut behind him and Rau spared the angry Newtype a glance.

"You make the most dramatic of entrances," Rau sniffed.

"I try," Shinn shot back, and came to a stop in front of Rau with his hand in his pocket, thumb running over the safety of a handgun. "So I've been talking with Emily."

"Have you now."

"Yeah. She's been acting strange lately— but," he narrowed his eyes, "I guess I don't need to tell _you_ that."

Rau smirked back. "Really."

"So I guess I'll cut to the chase," Shinn said— and faster than Rau could see, he reached forward, seized a handful of Rau's coat, and yanked the masked man close. "What the hell are you doing to her?"

"What are you talking— "

"Don't play dumb with me, asshole," Shinn snarled. "It's one thing for her to shut out Trojan and Lily. They're new. They haven't earned her trust. But it's another thing entirely for her to shut _me_ out— and after _you've_ been spending all that time with her. So let's have it. What the hell are you doing to her?"

Rau frowned back, mentally calling up his list of excuses. "For someone who purports to be her friend and mentor, and a Newtype to boot, you're being awfully insensitive to the poor girl's suffering. Captured by her abusive father and forced to watch as an entire city's worth of people chokes to death? Were you in her position, you would seek any comfort you could get."

"As though _you_ have comfort to offer," snapped Shinn. "I know you weren't there for charity's sake. You don't do anything out of charity. Not helping me in Bretagne, not staying here with us, not defending the ship." He narrowed his smoldering eyes at the mask that hid Rau's face. "Athrun told me what you did to Kira Yamato. Don't think I don't believe you won't do it again to Emily."

Rau paused for a moment, weighing his options. "I'll tell you what I told her," he said. "Neither side in this war is any better than the other. The world will be no better off if ZAFT wins than if the Alliance wins. And the Resistance is no better. You know that." He inclined his head. "Novorossiysk? Argus? Carpentaria? Arnhelm? And now, Chiao Xu running off to 'negotiate' with the same people who gassed Copernicus? Victory for the Resistance would mean nothing to the masses for which you fight. Do you disagree with that?"

"You're working another angle," Shinn snarled. "I know it."

"Only an angle that others have shown her already," fired back Rau. "Ms. McGriff of the DSSD told her to use her power to end the war. Even you brought her aboard for the purpose of arming her to face her destiny. Are you telling me that I am not to shepherd her towards the goal _you_ selected?" With that, he wrenched himself from Shinn's grip and straightened out his jacket. "I'll thank you to kindly take the paranoia and stow it, Shinn."

Shinn's blood boiled. "You know that's not what _any_ of us meant," he growled.

"Is it," Rau replied, and smirked, setting Shinn's veins on fire again. "I am not the one who plucked her out of Lord Djibril's castle to be a soldier. I did not choose this destiny for her. You did."

With that, he gathered up his belongings and swept out, leaving Shinn behind to fume in defeat.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Lily and Trojan exchanged a nervous glance as they watched on the main screen as Stella's Gaia Gundam took on a quartet of Kerberos BuCUE Hounds in the combat simulator. The Gaia ducked around the charging mobile suits, leapt off its feet, whirled elegantly through the air, and brought down its saber with a sudden swing to lop one of the mobile suits in two. The three survivors backed away, moving to open fire with their beam cannons— but the undeterred Gaia somersaulted over their heads and stabbed its saber down through a second BuCUE.

"So that's what they train Extended to do," Trojan said uneasily.

He glanced down at Lily. At Arnhelm she had been known by most to be an Extended who had been freed by a sympathetic Alliance soldier— who, in turn, was killed for his troubles. In the Cosmic Era nice guys were lucky to finish at all, let alone first. But watching her stare anxiously at the screen, where Stella Loussier— among the most modified of Extended— was savaging simulated enemies...

Unbidden, and yet unsurprisingly, he thought of the other girl on this ship known for savaging enemies in a black mobile suit. Shinn had gone off to talk to Emily in his stead, and that had evidently not gone well. And there was that mysterious masked man, Rau Le Creuset, the ZAFT ace who hid his face.

What did Emily have to hide? Something had gone down with her father. Maybe Viveka would know— but then that would be violating Emily's trust, which meant Viveka probably wouldn't say anything. And Viveka was also the person who could crush his larynx in her left hand effortlessly if she so chose, so that alone was reason enough to avoid rousing her ire.

Trojan shook his head and returned his eyes to the screen, where it was all much simpler. She would tell him when she was ready— and until then, all he had to do was wait.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Silence hung like a curtain in the Infinite Justice's cockpit, and in the seat, Athrun Zala glanced awkwardly around at the consoles. Usually he was in here working, but not this time. This time he simply sat back as far as he could in the cockpit seat, relishing the quiet that his deactivated Gundam allowed him from everything else. There weren't many nice quiet places on this ship where he could just sit and think.

He closed his eyes and reached out, through the ship, with his senses. Emily, Shinn, Rau— their pressures were always clear, and they were always easy to find, even for his own dimmer perception. The Extended too, with their telltale distortion— though Sting and Auel, still sedated in the sickbay, were a bit more challenging. Picking everyone else out was even harder.

But _she_ wasn't hard to find.

Athrun wondered what Cagalli's pressure would have felt like. She had died before his own senses had ever awakened. But what the hot-tempered princess had in energy and motivation and passion, she didn't have in cheer— however forced. Cagalli's life had not been one of cheer. Cheer was something that was to come later, after the victory, after the work was done.

He frowned, and pondered Viveka's presence again, turning it over in his mind, finding the scars on her mind as surely as he did on her flesh. The scars were there and she would not forget them, but she was not exactly broken. And while there was certainly fire in her will to resist injustice, it did not seem to be fire directed at herself. It was as if she looked at herself, saw what she was, and simply accepted it— and the pain and isolation that came with it.

But that, he reminded himself, was simply his reading into the jumble of emotions he felt from her. And she _was_ hopped up on painkillers.

And she was no Cagalli. With Cagalli he had always needed to be her anchor, the calm and collected counterweight to her unrestrained anger and drive. It had taken two of them to make one whole, complete person— and yet here, with Viveka, someone who physically was _less_ than whole, she had her own anchor in herself.

Maybe that was the problem. He wasn't needed.

He thought back to what Roxy had said. He could not read minds, but he could read her heart— which was just as good.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Staring at the stars and the dusty rock beneath them on the _Minerva_'s observation deck had grown tiring, so Emily had retreated back to her bunk, drifting somewhere between the beds and opting instead to stare at the ceiling.

She would have to talk to Trojan again at some point. The _Minerva_ was not so big a ship that she could hide from him forever, and some part of her missed him anyway. But she knew she couldn't escape eventually having to tell him about her past— or at least, the parts of it she knew.

That was the real problem. When she reached back into her memory, there were so many blank spots, and her father's words began to echo truer and truer in all those empty spaces. He had said she had always been meant to fight the Alliance, as she did now; without her memories, how was she going to argue against it? For all she knew, Gerhardt von Oldendorf had always intended to use her as his own weapon against the world's powers. Or maybe he was just lying. He had done plenty of that too, when she had been a child.

She would have to face Shinn again too. She felt some sort of confrontation between Shinn and Rau— and as she thought of it, she remembered that she still didn't know why there was such bad blood between them. That, she supposed, was something to find out.

Emily stared up bleakly towards the ceiling and turned the thoughts over in her mind. So many issues bubbling up together, and sooner or later they were going to be unavoidable.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

"Shinn," Meyrin said with an air that Shinn Asuka needed no Newtype senses to tell was disbelieving, "I don't know what went on between you two during the war, but what you're saying is kind of ridiculous. Rau has been here for about three months and all he's ever done is defend the ship. He gives us good advice and plots out working, innovative tactics for our mobile suit team." She sat back in her office chair and shrugged. "I'll admit I find the mask weird, but it's his thing, and he does good work for us. And now you're saying he's manipulating Emily? Into doing what?"

Shinn frowned. "I'm just saying he shouldn't be trusted so much."

"Then what went on between you two?" Meyrin asked.

For a moment, Shinn considered finding Athrun and bringing him here— because while it was personal in one way for Shinn, it was personal in an entirely different and perhaps more convincing way for Athrun. "Well," he started, "you ever wonder why the Junius War started in the first place?"

Meyrin furrowed her brows. "The colony drop. What else?"

"Yeah, but how did that colony ever get dropped in the first place? It's not like you can just find flare motors at the hardware store."

"We all know it was Patrick Zala loyalists who dropped Junius 7. What's that got to do with Rau?"

Shinn leaned forward. "How do you think those loyalists had access to such heavy-duty machinery as flare motors and modified, next-generation GINNs? How do you think they had access to Junius 7 itself— if not for someone within ZAFT, passing them supplies and information?"

"Are you saying Rau Le Creuset arranged the Junius 7 colony drop?"

"Absolutely."

Meyrin sat back and regarded Shinn thoughtfully for a moment. "Assuming I believe that— and I don't— then what does that have to do with Emily?"

Shinn swallowed and searched for another avenue in his mind. "Think about it, Meyrin," he said. "Why would you start a sequel to the Valentine War if you didn't want to bring down the Alliance _and_ ZAFT— and everyone in between? But that didn't work out, and in the process it cost Rau his devoted minions."

"And you're saying he's replacing them with Emily."

"Exactly."

Silence hung in the air between them for a moment before Meyrin sat back and ran her hands through her hair. "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt," she said, "because I know you wouldn't just up and lie about something like this. But you're going to have to find me some proof of what you're saying. Because ever since he joined us, all he's done is help us."

"That's just what he wants you to think," Shinn protested.

"Like I said," Meyrin continued, "find me some proof."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**May 3rd, CE 77 - ZAFT _Minerva_-class battleship _Fortuna_, the Moon**

Kira Yamato's stomach twisted at the image on the screen. There was Glasgow's fleet, approaching Sagan City, and the _Marseille III_-class transport that had just delivered its replacement mobile suits and pilots cruising back to Messiah. All well and good. There was the _Minerva_, arcing its way around Glasgow's forces at top speed and closing in on Sagan City first— clearly, to defend the colony. They could be dealt with. And there was the Alliance's titanic _Charlemagne_, closing in from the Debris Belt. Whether or not they were approaching at top speed, Kira could not say.

But then there was _that_ ship.

Kira knew that ship. It was the _Alexandria_, tenth of the _Eternal_-class ships. It had been isolated at the Junius War's end, its crew decimated, abandoned to the Debris Belt— and now it lay in the Resistance's hands. It was their flagship in space. And it was headed his way.

In the captain's chair, Lyle glanced up anxiously towards Kira. "Marshal, they're transmitting a white flag signal using the diplomatic code."

Kira swallowed distastefully. "I know. Chiao Xu is on that ship. I know it." He rubbed his eye and steeled himself for what was about to come. "He warned us that he was on his way to personally negotiate an end to _Hell's Wind_. We thought it was just a bluff, but..."

The XO glanced meaningfully at Lyle, and the captain nodded. "Shall we fire?"

"No," Kira answered, and ignored the surprised glances of all on the bridge. "Comm officer, contact Messiah and inform them of the situation. Then contact the _Alexandria_ and tell them we will accept Chiao Xu aboard our ship for negotiations."

The shock rippled through the bridge crew's hearts, and Kira forced himself to remain calm as Lyle turned again with disbelief etched onto his face. "Marshal, sir, you're going to negotiate an end— ?"

Deep within his heart, Kira felt the need to say yes— to turn the ship around, to order Glasgow back home, to put an end to all of this. But _she _would never forgive him for turning his back on the Coordinators. "I will hear his case," he said at last. "I didn't say I would do as he asks." He waved at the comm officer. "Send the transmissions. I'll be in my office."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

"That ship belongs with us," snarled Kara Guinness, floating on the _Fortuna_'s observation deck. At her side, Gary and Juarez exchanged a glance. "I mean, what's the Resistance going to do with it? Hide in the space trash from the Alliance?"

"I wonder what they're doing here," Gary added quietly. "I mean, they don't look like they're attacking."

"Who cares?" Kara asked.

"Maybe they're here to negotiate," Juarez suggested. "Wouldn't be a bad idea. The less killing we have to do, the better."

Kara looked over suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

"Well, stuff like this," Juarez said, casting a sweeping gesture over the lunar surface before them, "is going to cost us support. We might have had some sympathizers among the Naturals before Copernicus, but now?"

"Who cares about Naturals supporting us?" Kara answered. "They don't. Don't tell me you're forgetting what they did to us."

"Kara, hating the Naturals isn't going to bring back your family," Gary spoke up, silencing them both. Kara stared over at him with wide, hurt eyes. "Seriously. Killing anybody doesn't bring back the dead."

"How can you say that?" Kara hissed, and wheeled around on Gary. "How can a Martian who lived nice and comfy at Mount Olympus even think of telling me that?"

Juarez stepped between them. "Gary, we should go," he said quickly. "Let her cool off."

"You son of a bitch," Kara continued, "this is all I've got left. All I can do anymore is strike back at the people who took everything from me. And you're telling me that's _wrong?_"

"I'm telling you not to be a monster," Gary shot back—

Juarez quickly shoved Gary out the door and into the hallway, then turned towards Kara. "You know, I lost everything too," he said, "but he has a point. Think about it."

Before she could protest, he too was gone and the door slammed shut.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Resistance _Eternal_-class cruiser _Alexandria_, the Moon**

He was such a strange man. Joseph Copland watched and reflected on the _Alexandria_'s hangar floor, where the utility launch's hatch was wide open and waiting— and Chiao Xu was approaching.

"You don't have to do this," Copland spoke up.

Chiao Xu cast him a sidelong glance. "Of course I do, Joseph," he said. "If I don't, then ZAFT will just force its way through and destroy another city."

"The _Minerva_ will protect Sagan City."

"We cannot rely on the _Minerva_."

"But we always have."

Chiao Xu shook his head. "No. I have let them fight this war for too long. It has cost us everything and now it is fought between two armies with leaders that are both out of control. I must move while I still can, and give our species a chance to survive this war."

Copland frowned. "What are you talking about, sir?"

The wizened old man glanced around anxiously, and Copland felt a chill wash over him. "You know in my negotiations I have spoken with ZAFT's Vice Marshal. I suspect there's a glimmer of hope, with him. Perhaps I can get through to him, to stop this all."

"This operation?"

"This war."

"Chiao Xu, they're not going to let you. They'll kill you."

Chiao Xu closed his eyes and nodded. "Joseph," he said, and withdrew something from his pocket, "this monitor is connected to my heart. It will alert you the moment my heart stops beating— and when it does, you must order the _Alexandria_ to escape."

Copland stared down at the device for a moment in disbelief. "Sir, if you're trying to martyr yourself— "

"Hardly. People like martyrs." He pressed the device into Copland's hand. "Promise me, Joseph. You know what to do."

With that, Chiao Xu turned towards the launch and stepped inside, and Copland looked back down at the monitor in his hand and felt it weighed like lead.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Earth Alliance _Archangel_-class battleship _Lucifer_, the Moon**

Morgan Chevalier felt a chill wash over him as he laid eyes on the man striding down the hall before him, flanked by two armed guards. At least, Morgan assumed from the body type that it was a man— because his face was hidden by a round black helmet. He watched them go uneasily as they rounded a corner.

Morgan Chevalier, of course, was well aware of the Extended. No man with a rank like his in the Earth Alliance military could not have known that the Alliance had enhanced, weaponized humans within its ranks. Most never encountered one for themselves. But some did— and those that did would be faced with a choice. Most chose the easy option— the one that closed their eyes and turned their faces away.

Most people, after all, weren't made for martyrdom.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the pull-bar and found Colonel Joaquin approaching, with anger gleaming in his beady little eyes. "I see you've met ND HE," Joaquin said coolly as he came to a stop in front of Morgan.

"I've never seen a man in an outfit like _that,_" he answered. "Is he an Extended?"

Joaquin arched an eyebrow suspiciously. "What concern is it of yours?"

"I'd rather know who's on my side," Morgan answered, "and who's not."

"Captain Chevalier," Joaquin said, putting his hands behind his back imperiously, "it will be better if you let your superiors make that decision."

"Then I'll hold you responsible for whatever happens," Morgan answered, and brushed by Joaquin to leave.

Yes, few soldiers in the Alliance ever encountered Extended— but when they did, they faced a choice.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Battleship _Minerva_, outside Sagan City, the Moon**

Unlike the glitzy Copernicus, the tableau of Sagan City was one of blocky industrial installations strewn across a piece of Posidonius Crater, except for the construction in one of the crater walls where the concentration of people felt the densest to Emily's Newtype senses. If the point of this coming battle was to destroy the city's industrial capacity, the layout would make that easy.

Which meant she would have her work cut out for her.

Standing on the observation deck and staring out at the grim landscape of Sagan City, she felt her way through the ship and found Trojan, a moment before he opened the door and awkwardly stepped inside. Emily cast her eyes one more time over the city and turned around to face him as the door slid shut.

"I wanted to apologize for, uh, being the way I've been lately," she said quietly. "I've...had a lot on my mind."

Trojan smiled reassuringly. "That's what I thought."

Emily crossed her arms. "I guess you want to know why."

"If you want to tell me."

She was silent as he moved next to her, and she chose her words for a moment. "Well, I guess now that you're hanging out with Extended and stuff, it wouldn't be too hard to believe." She gestured to herself. "My father put me through a bunch of military training when I was a child, then buried it using Extended technology."

Trojan blinked. "He what?"

"Yeah," Emily sighed, "that's what that was all about in Copernicus."

"Wait," Trojan sputtered, "your _father_ did that to you?"

Emily shrugged.

"So, uh, does that make you an Extended or something?"

"No," Emily said, "I'm...something else." She studied Trojan's stunned face for a moment. "He did all that because I'm a Newtype."

"Those things the PLANT chairman was talking about a few years ago?"

Emily frowned. "It's real. I'm one. It's why I'm still alive. I had no right to survive all those battles when I first joined the _Minerva_. I was awful. Now," she waved a hand towards the ship's hangar, "now I'm being entrusted with power and stuff."

Trojan stayed silent a moment and Emily took the opportunity to scan over his feelings, and decided to be glad that at least he wasn't running away. "So your father wanted to, what, use you like an Extended or something?"

"Pretty much."

"And that's why he tried to kidnap you in Copernicus."

Emily nodded.

"Well," Trojan said, and scratched his head awkwardly, "ain't that some shit."

"I don't remember it all," she added, "and he told me how pleased he is with what I've become, so..." She shrugged again. "He chased off my sister, he turned me into his weapon, and he...killed my mother."

Trojan glanced around. "Your mother?"

"He...well, she was sick," Emily said, and felt the tears coming back. "And she had me because my sister didn't have the Newtype traits, and she never really recovered from it...from having me." She stopped herself as the rest of her words caught in her throat.

"Err...so," Trojan started, "do you want me to do something? Or do you want me to be a shoulder to cry on?"

Emily felt the tears stinging her eyes, and decided to quit caring, and threw herself into his arms. Trojan blinked in surprise and pulled her close, to let her sob into his chest.

"Okay," he said, "shoulder to cry on."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**May 4th, CE 77 - ZAFT _Minerva_-class battleship _Fortuna_, outside Sagan City, the Moon**

The door slid open and Kira Yamato met the cold brown eyes of Chiao Xu, leader of the Resistance. The old man scanned his surroundings, in the hallway just outside the hangar, and under his steely gaze Kira tried not to shiver. Chiao Xu stood before him ramrod straight, his face hard, surrounded by armed ZAFT soldiers. Wordlessly, he conducted the group to the conference room, and wordlessly he sat and watched Chiao Xu take his seat.

"Marshal Yamato," the old man said at last. "I trust you understand why I'm here."

Kira pressed down his emotions and sat back. He had his orders...but he would keep his word. "Of course. I will hear your case."

"My case is rather obvious. Gassing Copernicus was completely unjustified. Gassing Sagan City is equally unjustified. I ask you not to do so."

"And what assurance do you give that if we do, the Naturals will let us survive?" He narrowed his eye. "You should have come to make this case before we attacked Copernicus. There's no turning back now."

"Marshal," Chiao Xu said, and Kira felt a chill wash over him, "you know full well that doing the right thing requires no reward outside of itself. Do you think I don't see the tremble in your hands? Do you think I don't know your history? Do you think I don't know you stopped a slaughter like this at the height of the Valentine War? I know you are a man who would not kill millions of people for no reason. And yet you have. You have buried a good man somewhere within you— and I am here to appeal to you to dig him up."

Kira swallowed and felt his heart race. Somewhere in himself, the somewhere that Chiao Xu had so effortlessly found, he knew he agreed— knew that he had to throw off this charade and go and atone. But then _she..._ "I was naïve then. I am not now."

"No. Now you are a murderer." Chiao Xu leaned forward. "I do not care what you do with me. I do not expect you to stop. In fact, if you do, I suspect your Marshal will send someone else who cannot be swayed to do it in your stead. I appeal to you instead, Kira Yamato. The man who saved the PLANTs from Murata Azrael, and Earth from Patrick Zala. Somewhere within you beats the heart of a man who fights against injustice instead of causing it. I am here to bring him back."

Kira's mind spun— but then he saw her, he saw Fllay dying in a burst of fire, he saw the PLANTs annihilated by the Requiem— and he seized his heart, clenched his fist, and pushed the emotion back down.

"I'm afraid you're wrong, Chiao Xu," he said quietly. "But there is one part of me that remains the same. I am a man of my word. I have let you plead your case. And," he stood up and drew a pistol from his uniform, "I am also under orders to kill you."

Chiao Xu frowned. "So be it. My work here is done."

For a moment, Kira's finger twitched over the trigger, as visions of this man leading his new world danced before his eyes— but he saw Fllay and the Requiem and Valentine again, he clenched his teeth, and he pulled the trigger.

"Captain," he said into the intercom as he waved the smoke away and replaced his weapon, "send word to Glasgow. Begin the attack."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

**Resistance _Eternal_-class cruiser _Alexandria_, outside Sagan City, the Moon**

The monitor went dead, and Joseph Copland felt his own heart sink into his stomach. Just as Chiao Xu had predicted. The rest of the bridge crew listened wordlessly to the long, heartless tone from the little device, before Copland bowed his head and threw the power switch. Their disbelief hung in the air.

In the captain's chair down in front, the young officer named Malreux in the old off-white Alliance uniform glanced up anxiously at the older man. "Orders, sir?"

Copland glanced painfully over at the _Fortuna_, just long enough to watch its guns angle towards the _Alexandria_. "Evasive action, now!"

The _Alexandria_ obligingly swung down as the _Fortuna_'s cannons fired, and the blue warship rocketed away before the enemy could retaliate. Copland settled back into his chair and swallowed his emotions as Malreux barked out orders and the crew set to work. He had made his promise to Chiao Xu to escape, not just for his own life and the lives of this ship's crew, but for the Resistance— so that it could carry on, so that it could have a leader.

He looked back down sadly at the monitor and closed his hand around it. "Comm officer," he said, "contact the _Minerva_. Tell them that Chiao Xu has been killed," he glanced back at the _Fortuna_ one more time, "and the enemy's attack is commencing."

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The Vega Freedom Gundam hummed as Kira Yamato guided it into battle and steeled his nerves for a fight. Chiao Xu's words still ricocheted through his mind and sent a wash of coldness down his spine. Deep in his soul, he knew that the man Chiao Xu had sought was still there. That man would have flown into this battle on the other side, the side standing against him, protecting this city.

But that man was gone, and this one, the one whose mismatched hands rested on the Vega Freedom's shuddering controls, was the one that was left.

He looked up in surprise at a feeling of pressure up ahead and keyed on his camera's zoom feature— and then he frowned in surprise, as there, floating before Sagan City, waited the black Gundam with a shimmering green beam sword.

"Who...?"

With a flash from its eyes, the Gundam Eclipse charged.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

To be continued...


	18. Phase 18: The Battle of Sagan City

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 18 - The Battle of Sagan City

—

**May 4th, CE 77 - Outside Sagan City, the Moon**

Emily clenched her fists around the Gundam Eclipse's controls as the Vega Freedom approached. Her last battle with that white machine had resulted in four ruined Gundams—but not this time.

The Freedom stopped short and leveled off a series of cannons on its body, and with a flash, the DRAGOONs that had eviscerated the _Minerva_'s Gundams arrayed themselves around the white Gundam. Emily tensed herself for the attack, and the guns opened fire—

With that, the Eclipse's beam wings flashed to life, the black mobile suit lunged over the blasts, and it came down with a beam sword hack that slammed against the Freedom's beam shield. The Freedom backed away with another salvo from its mounted guns while the DRAGOONs spread out—but the Eclipse darted through the shots and slashed the Freedom's beam rifles in two with one sweeping sword stroke.

The white Gundam flung aside its ruined rifles and charged back with a beam saber, and the two Gundams came together with a crash and a shower of sparks.

"They told me your new machine was a sight to behold," the pilot's voice growled through the cockpit, and Emily blinked as she found herself face to face with a young man with a scarred face and a mechanical eye—face to face with Kira Yamato. "I guess that's to be expected."

Emily scowled back and let the Eclipse's engines respond, throwing the Freedom back with a burst of exhaust. The Freedom darted back and fired again with its guns, and the DRAGOONs filled the black sky with beam fire. The Eclipse snaked its way through the fire, the Freedom came down again with its saber upraised, and the two Gundams slammed together again.

—

Up ahead, five glints of light flickered to life in the black sky, and Athrun Zala clenched his teeth as he caught sight of the one in the lead—that golden GOUF, with that loudmouthed pilot at the helm again, no doubt. The ZAKU Phantom and three ZAKU Warriors training behind the GOUF leveled off their rifles and opened fire, and Athrun jammed back the controls to hurl the Justice back towards Sagan City.

The GOUF charged in with its sword upraised and swept after the Justice with furious sword strokes. "Getting in our away again, are you Zala?" sneered Rudolf Wittgenstein as the golden mobile suit pressed the attack.

"I wouldn't quite call it that," Athrun grunted—and with a crash, he rammed the GOUF aside with the Justice's elbow, shouldered his way past the golden machine, and speared one of the approaching ZAKUs on a beam rifle blast before they could retaliate. Rudolf snarled in fury and swung back with the GOUF's sword, but caught nothing as the Justice darted away and showered the oncoming ZAKUs with rifle fire.

"Don't think targeting _them_ is going to do you any good," Rudolf said as the GOUF went back on the attack. "We've got plenty more where those came from!"

Athrun slammed the Justice back down onto the lunar surface, ducked beneath another sword blow from the GOUF, and then whipped around the golden mobile suit and fired again to take down the ZAKU Phantom. The surviving two ZAKU Warriors darted back behind their shields as the GOUF forced the Justice back on the defensive with another sword swipe.

"Send them all, then," Athrun shot back. "I won't let you do to Sagan City what you did to Copernicus."

Rudolf licked his lips. "You don't have a choice, Zala."

—

"I guess it's our turn," grunted Shinn Asuka as the Destiny Gundam roared into battle, with the Gaia at its side. He scanned the enemies ahead—only three, the sleek, silver mobile suits that had joined the Freedom the last time the _Minerva_ had done battle with its doppelganger.

The three VaROZ units broke formation and charged with a fusillade of beam rifle fire. Shinn glanced over at Stella, and then flung the Destiny down into the lunar dirt. The three silver mobile suits split up again—and Shinn seized the chance to charge straight at the first with his sword drawn and slam its beam shield with an overhead hack. The Gaia skidded onto the ground below, snapped up its rifle, and opened fire to force back the other two VaROZs.

"Weren't expecting a challenge, were you?" Shinn chuckled, and yanked the Destiny back as the other two VaROZs opened fire in defense of their comrade. The first unit fired back with a beam cannon in its torso—only to catch nothing but an afterimage as the Destiny whirled up above them and came back down with another sword slice. The VaROZ backed away and the other two opened fire, but Shinn darted through their shots and charged after the first unit, while Stella kept the other two at bay with a storm of rifle blasts.

The first VaROZ charged forward with a drawn beam saber and slammed it against the Destiny's sword—just long enough for the other two to line up for a lethal blast on the Destiny's flanks. Shinn jammed back the controls just as the enemies opened fire, and Stella fired back to force the two mobile suits on the defensive. The first leveled off its rifle and fired again, but Shinn somersaulted over the shots and ripped the rifle in two with a downward sword stroke.

Undaunted, the VaROZ abandoned its ruined weapon and pounded the Destiny's sword with a saber hack, and Shinn frowned as the image of a brown-haired girl in a ZAFT Red's flight suit flickered onto his auxiliary screen.

"Of all the people to show up here," she snarled, hatred dancing like fire in her eyes, "it had to be _you_, you traitor."

Shinn smirked back. "I have a way of doing that."

The girl scowled with hatred and the VaROZ flung the Destiny back with a shove and charged.

—

Shuddering from the thunderous death of a skewered ZAKU Phantom, the GOUF Ignited with Rau Le Creuset at the controls whirled around, sword in hand, for its next victim. Rau scanned the space around him for signs of human life and found five more—but only three mobile suits in front of him.

"Using the same tactics again, are you?" he chuckled, and the GOUF vaulted up into the sky as a Gunner ZAKU Warrior blasted away the ground beneath Rau's feet. The surviving Blaze and Slash ZAKU Warriors charged after the GOUF—only for Rau to lunge back down towards them, sword in hand, and saw in half the first. The second wheeled around with its beam Gatlings leveled off—but instead, the GOUF shot out its left-hand heat rod and whipped it through the ZAKU's waist, ripping the mobile suit in two.

Rau turned his eyes towards the space where he felt two human presences and let loose a salvo from his beam guns. A moment later another Blaze ZAKU Warrior flickered into existence, beam rifle raised; Rau ducked beneath its shots, slammed it in the back with a kick, then swept down to slice it in half. He seized the ZAKU's fallen beam rifle, turned again, and smirked.

"Don't think you can get away like that," he admonished—and with a pulsing trio of beam blasts, he fired into the spot where another ZAKU was hauling a large gas canister and a small Mirage Colloid device, and blasted them all apart with a burst of fire. "Of course," he added as the wreckage rained down around him, "far be it from me to stop a slaughter like this," he turned the GOUF's monoeye towards the next group of attackers, "but I'd hardly be playing my character properly if I didn't."

Up above, another Gunner ZAKU Warrior leveled off its cannon for a sweeping blast, and a Slash ZAKU Phantom swung out its beam axe and charged for battle. Rau grinned back and dropped the GOUF into a combat stance to await its oncoming foe.

—

The DOM Trooper rattled as it skimmed along the ground, a cloud of dust billowing in its wake. Trojan Noiret glanced up towards the black, star-studded sky—just in time to see a pair of blazing lights, the sapphire wings of the Eclipse and the white armor of the Freedom, as the two Gundams clashed above the moon.

That, of course, was Emily's problem. Everyone had told him not to even think of engaging the Freedom. He would get torn apart, they said. Leave it to Emily. She would take care of it.

He clenched his fists around the controls in frustration. Of course, leave it to her, leave her on her own.

Trojan jammed back the controls as a beam barrage from up ahead broke him out of his reverie, and he fired back with his custom beam rifle. As the four ZAKUs up ahead broke ranks and returned fire, Trojan pulled back just long enough to arm the Gigalauncher's bazooka instead of the beam gun. The ZAKUs swept in—

Instead, Trojan ducked beneath their blasts, whipped around, and fired the Gigalauncher's fragmentation shell to his right, where the ZAKUs had begun their attack. The shrapnel ripped through something, and a moment later, a mauled Slash ZAKU Phantom flickered into existence, next to a towering gas canister—

"_Gotcha!_" Trojan shouted, and pitched the DOM forward as the ZAKUs turned their fire on him again. The damaged ZAKU shuddered to a halt—Trojan seized the chance to blast through it with his rifle and punch through the canister, to wipe them both out in a fiery blaze.

He pulled back behind his beam shield as the remaining ZAKUs furiously opened fire. He might not be able to fight the real monsters up there, but at least he could do the grunt work down here—until she was ready to let him join her.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, en route to Sagan City, the Moon**

"So there they go," muttered Ivan Danilov, leaning forward in the captain's chair on the _Charlemagne_. "Sensor officer, any word on enemy casualties?"

"Nothing confirmed yet, sir. Preliminary estimates are that they've lost about eight mobile suits."

Vera frowned. "Out of a force of, what, a hundred?"

"Probably more. It's a start. As long as they aren't able to land any forces to conduct another gassing." He sat back and stroked his chin thoughtfully. "And we're in position to intervene if necessary."

"If necessary," Vera repeated, and shifted uncomfortably. "Sir, nobody is going to authorize us to intervene. Not without attacking the _Minerva_ as well. You know Command won't see it your way."

Danilov fixed his eyes on the flashes of light far ahead, where the _Minerva_ was fighting off the ZAFT forces. Defending a city. A city full of Naturals and, probably, Coordinators. All Alliance citizens. Doing his job for him—while he sat here and pondered the ramifications of shooting them in the back as they did so. He pushed down that twisted feeling in his stomach, that he was on the wrong side. That feeling had never served him well before.

But the _Minerva_ was still there, on the side of justice. And Ivan Danilov would not overlook that.

"Command doesn't have to see it my way," Danilov said finally. "Helm, full speed to Sagan City. It's time we tangled with the big bad wolves of ZAFT."

—

Sven Cal Bayan slammed his fist into the wall of the locker room as he put on his flight suit. It was all getting to be too much.

Captain Danilov's orders were clear. The _Charlemagne_ would eliminate the ZAFT forces currently attacking Sagan City. Fine. But the _Minerva_ was there too, and Captain Danilov's orders on _that_ had been clear too.

He sighed and mopped back his hair. The _Minerva_. His enemy, the ship he had to defeat, because it had handed him so many defeats and cost him so many comrades and subordinates. Now he had the Crusader Gundam, the machine with which he knew he could win—and he couldn't use it. Captain Danilov's orders were, after all, clear. So long as ZAFT was carrying out attacks like this, the _Minerva_ was not their enemy.

But that was not what every fiber of Sven's being thought, and while his mind could understand the principle of enemies of his enemies becoming friends, the rest of him—the part that burned in impotent fury when the Destiny sent him spiraling away empty-handed and exulted at his victory at Arnhelm—that part didn't care.

Sven snapped on his helmet and shut the seals before the child could speak up. He could not afford distractions now.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Rattling under a near miss from a _Laurasia_-class frigate's guns, the _Minerva_ plowed ahead with its CIWS blazing and missiles bursting into fiery clouds around the ship's sloping prow. Meyrin watched the enemy ship's lime-green hull through the smoke and flames, as the frigate wheeled around with its guns swiveling to face the _Minerva_.

"Captain, _Nazca_-class approaching at five o'clock," Burt spoke up from the sensor console.

Meyrin eyed the _Laurasia_ for a moment and saw her chance. "Tristans, target the _Laurasia_ to port and fire!"

The _Minerva_ sent out four blazing green beams that smashed into the _Laurasia_'s dorsal surface and blew off most of its large weapons. Meyrin sat back and turned her attention towards the auxiliary screen, where the _Nazca_ was angling its guns for a counterattack.

"Malik, descend!" The _Minerva_ groaned as it veered down towards the surface and the _Nazca_'s shots sizzled by overhead. "Roxy, send Lily to finish off that _Laurasia_ before it comes about! Malik, turn us back around; Neidhardt missiles, prepare to fire!"

Up ahead, the silver Vent Savior shot by with a burst of exhaust and poured plasma cannon fire into the crippled _Laurasia_'s center, and with a thundering explosion, the ship cracked in two. The _Minerva_ swung its prow around as the _Nazca_ above pulled up, beam cannons blazing—

"Incoming fire is too thick!" Malik shouted. "We're not going to get through—"

"_I_ will!" Lily's voice cut in from Roxy's console, and with a flash, the Vent Savior spiraled up through the _Nazca_'s barrage, fired back, and ripped off its portside beam cannon.

Meyrin leaned forward. "Tristans, target the _Nazca_'s centerline and fire!"

—

Sparks rained down into the lunar dust as Rau's GOUF strained in a sword lock with a hulking DOM Trooper, beam saber blazing. He glanced over the DOM's head, finding another two ZAKUs with another invisible pair, tugging a gas canister after them. He tightened his grip on the controls.

"Heaven knows where you got all this nerve gas in the first place, Valentine," he grunted—and with a crash, he slammed the GOUF's knee into the DOM's chest, then vaulted up into the sky, charged forward, and slammed his sword directly into the point between those two invisible human presences. Abruptly the towering canister materialized, along with the two ZAKUs and a ruined Mirage Colloid device. Rau rocketed upwards and ripped the canister in half, and watched with satisfaction as a red cloud of gas billowed out. He threw the GOUF back as the ZAKUs angrily opened fire, shrouded in red vapor. ZAFT included a bright red dye in their nerve gases to allow troops to see leaks in storage, and the canister contained a mechanism to remove the dye in intentional releases—but it made for a nice effect that he almost wanted to admire, if not for the fact that he was being shot at.

The DOM came streaking in from behind with its Gigalauncher leveled off; Rau whipped around on one foot and brought his sword up through the DOM's shoulder, ripping off its left arm. The wounded DOM staggered away to let a Slash ZAKU Warrior attack instead, pounding the GOUF's sword with its beam axe. Rau ducked away from the blows—he glanced to the side and slammed the GOUF down to one knee, just in time for a Blaze ZAKU Warrior to send a volley of beam rifle shots blazing over his head. The Slash ZAKU leveled off its beam Gatlings; the GOUF sprang forward, sword blazing, and sliced the ZAKU in half.

As the bisected ZAKU exploded, Rau whipped around to face the remaining ZAFT machines—but another blaze of beam fire tore up the lunar ground around him. He pulled back behind his shield and scanned the skies—in time to see the Proto Gaia and Proto Savior up above, charging into the fight.

—

The Gundam Eclipse's engines hummed as the mobile suit wove its way through the Vega Freedom's furious DRAGOON fire. Emily seized her chance to lunge through an opening in the barrage and slam her sword down onto the Freedom's beam saber. It backed away and swung for the Eclipse's head; Emily smacked the blade aside and swung down again, stopped only by the Freedom's beam shield. The white Gundam shoved her sword aside and charged for a lethal stab—Emily jammed back the controls, grunted painfully at the sudden change in g-forces, and then jammed her sword down to spoil the Freedom's blow.

"I wasn't expecting this kind of fight," Kira Yamato said quietly, and Emily scowled up at his mismatched eyes.

"You didn't think I would just let you do this, did you?"

"You'd better. We're going to create a better world out of all this."

The Eclipse surged forward with a blast from its engines and hurled the Freedom back. "By gassing people to death?"

In response, the Freedom backflipped away and showered the Eclipse with firepower. Emily threw her Gundam through the openings and rocketed back up towards the Freedom for another vicious swordfight. "You don't have any room to be talking, Angel of Death," Kira shot back, and Emily clenched her fists angrily around the Eclipse's joysticks. "I would have thought someone like you would be all about what we're doing. We're going to create a world where what you do isn't necessary."

"Well," Emily grumbled, "yeah, if you kill everyone, then there won't be anyone left for me."

The Freedom flung the Eclipse back. "It's not like that. It's something bigger." The Freedom pointed its saber at the Eclipse combatively. "Come on. You were bred to be a living weapon for a bunch of corrupt politicians. I know that. You know that. What are you doing fighting on that world's behalf?"

Emily took the opportunity to glance around the battlefield and found a handful of red clouds rising up from the lunar surface. So they were making progress. "Then what do you call _this?_"

"_This_," Kira cried, as the Freedom charged forward and the two Gundams locked blades again, "is the only way to create a better world!" The Freedom whirled around the Eclipse; Emily turned and slammed her sword up against the Freedom's saber. "People only change when they have no choice. That was how I learned to pilot mobile suits. That was how _you_ survived this far, wasn't it? And I can sense it from you. The pressure. You're a Newtype, like me, something more than a Coordinator." The Freedom rammed its knee into the Eclipse's torso; it swept down and only a quick strike from the Eclipse's beam shield saved Emily from the Freedom's sweeping saber stroke. "We're going to create a world where it's safe for people to become Newtypes. If we have to slaughter millions of people to do it, then so be it. The world we'll get will be worth it all."

The Freedom roared in for another blow—but Emily sent the Eclipse diving to the side, rocketed back up behind the Freedom, ducked through its DRAGOON fire, and brought down a crashing downward sword hack against the Freedom's beam saber. "Nothing's worth killing millions of people!" she shot back. "If you want this to happen, you're going to have to go through me!"

Kira scowled. "That's what I thought." The Freedom surged forward, swarmed its DRAGOONs, and went back on the attack.

—

"Get out of our way!" screamed the VaROZ pilot as its saber slammed against the Destiny's anti-ship sword with a shower of sparks. "This is more important than you!"

Shinn grunted as the VaROZ shoved him away. "I thought you guys would come back here looking for more than just vengeful slaughter."

"What do you know, traitor?" shrieked the VaROZ pilot, and with a crash it brought down another overhead swing onto the Destiny's sword. Shinn backed away from the next swing, then rushed in close to ram the VaROZ with his shoulder—but before he could finish it off, the other two VaROZs opened fire with their rifles to force the Destiny back. The Gundam landed with a crash and skidded to a halt next to the Gaia.

"This could be going better," Shinn grumbled. "Stella, another squad inbound. They've got a canister—"

He cut himself off and the two Gundams lunged apart as the three VaROZs attacked again. The first one charged with its beam saber held high.

"Stella, the gas—!" Shinn shouted.

The Gaia vaulted over the other two VaROZs and charged. They whirled around and leveled off their own guns; Shinn ground his teeth as he surged forward, throwing the first VaROZ aside, and sent a long-range cannon blast spiraling up towards the two VaROZs. They darted aside, but not before the Gaia plunged into the oncoming ZAKUs' ranks with a shining beam saber.

The first VaROZ sprang back to its feet and forced the Destiny back on the defensive with a furious saber hack. "Don't you dare try to take this from us!" the pilot screamed. "Not after everything else has been taken!"

Shinn scowled back and hefted his sword as the VaROZ came in for another swordfight.

—

With a groan of straining metal, the Infinite Justice whipped around beneath the golden GOUF Ignited's furious sword swipes. Athrun scanned over the space where the presence felt strongest and squeezed off a beam rifle blast—

Up ahead, a fireball tore out of nowhere and Athrun backed away with some satisfaction as another gas canister erupted into flames and smoke.

Rudolf turned around with a scream and slammed his sword down onto the Justice's beam saber. "_How_ are you _doing that!"_

Athrun tapped the side of his helmet. "Newtype."

"_Don't_ talk to me about _Newtypes!_" shrieked Rudolf, and the GOUF flung the Justice away. "Don't tell me that bullshit! Acting like you're something more than me!"

Athrun jammed his saber up to deflect a blow from the GOUF. "I never said _that,_" he answered, "but now that you mention it—"

The GOUF rushed forward and slammed the Justice back. Athrun jammed the controls towards the rear, letting the Justice dive beyond the reach of the GOUF's sword. Rudolf snarled a curse and charged forward anyway, and the GOUF's left-hand heat rod snaked out towards its foe—only for Athrun to lunge forward and slash it in two, and then bring down his saber onto the GOUF's sword.

"Don't think you're clever bringing up that Newtype horseshit," Rudolf hissed, and Athrun frowned at the hatred glittering in his eyes.

"Never listened to Chairman Dullindal's speech, did you?"

The GOUF roared forward again. "There is nothing in the Earth Sphere superior to the Coordinators!" Rudolf shouted. "That is why we must secure our existence, by destroying the Naturals who threaten us constantly! Why don't you understand!" The GOUF rained sword blows onto the Justice's saber. "_I_ will _make_ you understand!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_

Tension buzzed in the air on the _Caernafon_'s bridge as Glasgow squirmed in the command chair. The _Minerva_ had already taken down the initial strike squads—despite their Mirage Colloid. He could not fathom how that could be possible. Nobody had sensor equipment capable of locating something surrounded by an active Mirage Colloid system—right?

In the adjacent chair, Leons Graves glanced over with a frown. "They're doing better than I expected."

Glasgow leaned forward. "We're wasting our time," he growled. "Graves, I'm going to send out the rest of the gassing squads, with the full complement of containers."

"Inadvisable," Graves answered, to Glasgow's annoyance. "We won't have any leftover for the next phases."

"Dammit Graves, there's not _going_ to be a next phase if this keeps up," Glasgow shot back with a furious gesture towards the front. "We can always be resupplied again."

Graves looked skeptically towards the battlefield. "That's a risk—"

He said no more as a thundering shockwave slammed into the _Caernafon_ and nearly threw him from the chair. Glasgow turned his bulging eyes to port and froze in disbelief as he caught sight of the fireball that used to be one of his _Laurasia_ frigates.

"What the hell was that?" Graves grunted as he staggered back to his feet. "Glasgow—"

"Commander!" the sensor officer cried. "New warship with hostile IFF appearing at 6 o'clock! An _Agamemnon_-class carrier, launching mobile suits!"

"What?" Glasgow cried, and turned his eyes towards the tactical map—where, sure enough, a warship was spewing out mobile suits into his fleet's rear. "That's impossible!" He whipped around, heart racing. "Divert half the forces to deal with the _Agamemnon!_ Order the _Lothar Meyer_ to unload the rest of the gas canisters and send the mobile suits forward with them! I don't care if we run out! Get two ships to protect them! We are going to finish the operation!"

"Commander," Graves spoke up, "why not call for the _Fortuna?_ It's been sitting outside the battlefield just waiting."

"They're to enter battle only on the Vice Marshal's order," Glasgow grumbled, "and he's..._busy_." The ZAFT officer clenched his fists as his flagship rattled. "How the hell did they even sneak up on us...?"

—

"Now this is more like it!" cackled Lily as the Vent Savior spiraled through a _Laurasia_ frigate's furious barrage of beams and railgun shells in mobile armor mode. She stopped short and yanked back on the controls as a Blaze ZAKU Warrior lunged up before her and unleashed a swarm of missiles. The Vent Savior shook as the missiles slammed home. "Hey—dammit, no fair—!"

The ZAKU plunged through the smoke, beam tomahawk upraised—but Lily seized her chance to jerk the silver mobile suit to the right, letting the ZAKU catch nothing with its blade, and before it could follow up she transformed the Gundam into its mobile suit mode, speared the ZAKU through the cockpit on a beam rifle shot, and took off again.

"Lily," Roxy started through the cockpit speakers, "frigate on point to port—give it some pain!"

Lily paused for a moment to regain her bearings and then flashed a grin as she caught her target. "On it!" The Vent Savior transformed and charged again, danced around the blasts from the enemy warship. The crosshairs passed over her target—the Vent Savior let loose a burst of beam fire that plowed through the _Laurasia_'s prow and blasted out its bridge. Lily jammed back the controls and pulled the Vent Savior into a steep climb. "_Minerva_, all yours!"

A thundering wave of Tristan fire sizzled by underneath the Vent Savior and slammed through the _Laurasia_'s center, and vast arms of fire ripped the warship apart in a shuddering explosion.

Lily glanced up at an oncoming ZAKU—only to see it speared from the side by another beam blast, and a Dagger L and a GuAIZ R shot by overhead. "What the—?"

"Those are the _Ortygia_'s mobile suits, remember?" Roxy cut in. "Leave them alone and get back here—mobile suits to starboard!"

"Hold your horses," grunted Lily as she wheeled the Vent Savior around and rocketed back into the fray.

—

Rau Le Creuset grinned with excitement as he locked blades with the nimble, crimson Proto Gaia, its beam saber blazing. The Proto Savior whirled in from behind, beam rifle ready; Rau vaulted into the air to dodge the blast and took off with a burst of exhaust, as the two prototypes spewed fire after the retreating GOUF. It landed with a crash and Rau grunted as it skidded to a halt—and then the cloud of dust parted as the Proto Gaia swung in with its saber shining.

"Emily's little nemesis, aren't you," he muttered, and then threw the GOUF back to avoid the Proto Savior's beam blasts. "At least you're a worthy enemy—" He frowned as another presence appeared nearby, ducked under the Proto Gaia's saber swing, and lunged back again—and then opened fire with his left-hand beam guns to eviscerate the ZAKU he knew was hiding with a gas canister behind the curtain of Mirage Colloid. A thundering explosion ripped into view and Rau watched with satisfaction as the two prototypes stopped short to watch.

An instant later, the Proto Gaia was upon him again and the two mobile suits traded swings. The Proto Gaia darted aside; the Proto Savior lined up for a punishing plasma cannon blast that forced the GOUF back on the defensive, and Rau grinned back at the two charging Gundams.

"A skilled opponent, I'll give you that," he chuckled, "but I'm still winning!"

—

The beam sword flickered as it met the Vega Freedom's beam saber. In the Eclipse's cockpit, Emily ground her teeth as another blow was spoiled by the Freedom pilot's skillful swordsmanship—and she flung the black Gundam back to dodge another preternaturally precise volley of DRAGOON fire.

"If you won't stand aside, then I'll just have to _move_ you aside," Kira warned, and the Freedom fired off another salvo from its cannons. The Eclipse darted through the blasts, streaked back down, and dove back into another swordfight with the white Gundam. "We didn't come back to let you stop us."

"Then what _did_ you come back for?" Emily shot back; the Eclipse slammed down its sword onto the Freedom's blade, and the two Gundams rattled from the blow. Emily glowered down at the white Gundam—

A jolt of pressure shocked her consciousness, emanating from the man inside the Freedom's armor. She blinked in disbelief as Kira's presence colored itself in: steely determination, icy resolve, a current of anger...and somewhere in there was buried remorse, horror, sorrow, hopelessness.

She struggled for words as the sparks flew from the locked blades. "You...even you know..."

Kira's eye flickered with emotion for a moment. "What?"

"Even you know that this is evil," Emily said, "and..." Her memories flashed back to Copernicus and that haunting cloud of death; her blood ran hot and the Eclipse surged forward. "That's even worse! You're doing this and you know it's evil!" The Eclipse flung its white-armored enemy back with a furious swing. "Then you're just a monster!"

"I told you what we're here for!" Kira shot back. "We're here to secure—"

"That's all just words!" Emily cut in, and with a crash, the Freedom and Eclipse descended back into a furious swordfight as the Freedom's DRAGOONs danced around the dueling Gundams. "Not even you believe them!"

Kira's eye flashed with fury. "_You're wrong!_" The Freedom slammed back the Eclipse's beam sword and went back on the offensive with roaring engines and blazing DRAGOON guns. "My cause is _not like that!_"

With a blazing saber, the Freedom stabbed forward towards the Eclipse's cockpit; the black Gundam whirled around, dancing through the DRAGOON blasts, and came back down with a sweeping overhead sword stroke against the Freedom's shield. Kira backpedaled behind his DRAGOONs; the Eclipse snaked its way through and the two Gundams returned to fencing.

"You say you're trying to build a world of Newtypes, and then a Newtype calls you out on what a lie that is," snapped Emily, "and then you reject it when someone achieves the understanding you said you wanted!" The Freedom swung for the Eclipse's head; Emily parried the blow with a swift counterstrike. "You're just mad because I can understand you—and I can understand what a _monster_ you are!"

"You don't understand _anything!_" Kira screamed; the saber came down again, the sparks flew, and the Gundam's eyes flashed.

—

**ZAFT battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, outside Sagan City, the Moon**

In the _Fortuna_'s captain's chair, Lyle frowned up at the auxiliary screen, where the bearded face of Glasgow was raging from the _Caernafon_'s bridge.

"What do you _mean_ you haven't gotten the order yet?" Glasgow bellowed. "We're being slaughtered here, captain! Where is Marshal Yamato?"

Lyle shifted uncomfortably. The truth, of course, was that Marshal Yamato was all wrapped up fighting the Resistance's new Gundam. This wasn't a totally bad thing—it kept the new Gundam from attacking other targets—but that left Lyle under strict orders to remain on the battle's fringe and await orders, or a catastrophe that demanded his immediate intervention.

He leaned forward and decided that this was the latter. "I will send mobile suits—"

"Captain!" the sensor officer cried. "New enemy warship at three o'clock! Heat source—"

They all fell silent as a pulsing red beam plowed clear into the starboard side of one of Glasgow's _Laurasia_ frigates and blasted it apart with a thundering explosion. Lyle scanned the skies in disbelief and caught sight of something among the stars—

"That ship," he snapped, "identify it now!"

The vast black warship unloaded mobile suits and let loose another withering barrage of beam fire. Lyle frowned as he watched the salvo catch one of the hidden gas teams near the ground—and another red cloud puffed up over the lunar surface.

"Heat signature confirmed! It's the _Charlemagne!_"

Lyle sat back, feeling like he had been punched in the gut. "Then...inform the Vice Marshal. We may have to retreat." He glowered over towards the _Caernafon_.

—

Shinn Asuka blinked in surprise as a wave of beam fire ripped apart one of the ZAKUs up ahead and tore apart the gas canister it was holding. The three VaROZs darted away in surprise—and then the Crusader Gundam rocketed into the fight, beam rifle blazing. The Vanguard and Artemis followed with a salvo of their own and the VaROZs pulled back behind their beam shields, as another ZAKU fell to the barrage.

"What the hell is this?" Shinn started. He backed away with the Gaia at his side, as the Crusader and its two allies savaged the ZAKUs.

"Are they...helping?" Stella asked quietly.

"I can't tell," Shinn answered, "but let's get back in case they aren't."

The Destiny vaulted up into the air with the Gaia and backpedaled as the ZAKUs crumpled under the Crusader's blows. Shinn blinked in surprise as an image of a young man with silver hair appeared on his auxiliary screen. "Don't think we're on your side now, Shinn Asuka," Sven Cal Bayan warned with a scowl. "Don't ever think that."

Shinn arched his eyebrow. "Of course not." The Destiny's eyes flashed as it and the Gaia slipped away.

—

The wreckage of another destroyed warship came pounding down onto the surface, and through the smoke Athrun watched carefully as Rudolf's golden GOUF struggled to stay on its feet.

"There's no way you can stop all these forces," Athrun warned. "If you surrender to us, we'll show you the mercy you won't get from the Alliance."

Fury flashed across Rudolf's face. "_Mercy?_" he screamed; the GOUF roared forward with its beam sword at the ready. "You mean to tell me you're going to join forces with those _subhumans_ against _your own people?_"

Athrun jammed his saber forward to stop the GOUF's sword stroke. "You haven't been my people for a long time."

"_Traitor!_" Rudolf screamed, and the GOUF surged forward. "Mark my words, Zala; you will regret kowtowing to the Naturals! They don't want to coexist; they want to destroy us! And you'll hand us all to them, and we'll be destroyed, and maybe then you'll understand why your father put us on the right path!"

At that, Athrun felt his blood run hot as the GOUF charged forward; he slammed back the golden with a hard saber swing, ducked against its counterattack, and then lunged up with his saber to plant the blade through the mobile suit's chest.

"It's a shame you had to be so blinded by rage," he shot back, as the GOUF's monoeye went dark, "but I'm not letting you follow the path my father wanted."

Rudolf's bulging, fearful eyes flickered with hatred. "The blood of our people will be on your hands! Never forget—"

The GOUF exploded, Rudolf vanished, and Athrun gritted his teeth as the shockwave rattled the Justice. He glanced up through the smoke, and saw another ZAFT warship go down in flames before the _Charlemagne_'s unstoppable firepower. And he felt Kira out there, his frustration and fear growing with each passing second. Emily would take care of him. And in the meantime, he glanced back down at the golden GOUF's wreckage.

"Well," he said quietly, "I can do better than _that_."

—

The Gundam Eclipse came down with a scream and an upraised beam sword onto the Vega Freedom, and the white Gundam desperately parried the Eclipse's relentless sword blows. Emily hurled her Gundam to the right to dodge the Freedom's point-blank cannon salvo, and then threw it back into the enemy's face to avoid the DRAGOONs. As the two blades met again, she stole a glance over the white Gundam's shoulder and caught sight of the _Marseille III_ freighter—the one where those invisible mobile suits were gathering, apparently to get their poison gas.

"The Phantom Pain isn't going to stop us anymore than you will," Kira warned. "I won't let anyone stop us. Certainly not something so twisted as you."

Emily curled her fingers around the Eclipse's controls and thought back to what he had said before. "And what makes me so twisted?"

"Everything about you!" Kira snapped, and the Freedom pressed its blade harder against the Eclipse's sword. "You were created to be nothing more than a mindless fighter! A human weapon! A—"

Emily seized her chance to activate the Voiture Lumiere and throw the Eclipse forward, sending it rocketing past the bewildered Kira. She jammed the controls up as he belatedly brought his DRAGOONs to bear; the Eclipse roared down towards the _Marseille III_ below. A pair of ZAKUs rose to oppose her; she sliced through them both with her beam wings and slammed her sword down into the ship's engine blocks. The Freedom charged after her with its beam saber drawn—only for the Eclipse to whip around with a horizontal slash to deflect the Freedom's saber, and Emily slammed the Eclipse's left-hand palm cannon into the ship's engine block and poured fire from the Palma Fiocina into the wound.

"I don't know why everyone thinks they have a right to tell me what I am," Emily said as she watched the Freedom and its disbelieving pilot. "Besides, a weapon's only as good as what you use it for."

The _Marseille III_ split in two and Emily rocketed to safety as the blast tore it apart and swept the Freedom away.

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_

A current of ice ran through Glasgow's veins as he saw the _Lothar Meyer_ break apart and saw the fire spilling out of its innards—incinerating all that gas and most of the dozen mobile suits gathered around it. The _Caernafon_'s bridge fell silent, until it was rocked again by the destruction of the fleet's second remaining _Nazca_ ship.

"Well," Graves said quietly, "that kind of fucks us over."

Glasgow leaned forward. "Are you telling me that sixty percent of my task force was destroyed here, and our entire gas store?" He slammed his fist down onto the command chair's armrest. "Comm! Order all units to retreat at once! Maximum speed!"

Graves glanced up skeptically. "Marshal Yamato won't be—"

"Damn Marshal Yamato!" Glasgow roared. "This operation is a failure! Get us out of here!" He wheeled around on Graves with rage burning in his eyes. "And _you!_ Where were your vaunted strategies _this_ time, when it _mattered?_"

"I don't see why you're blaming me," Graves shot back. "I did my job; your job was to provide the protection."

The ZAFT commander angrily whirled back towards the front and watched as the _Caernafon_ swung around to make its escape.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Well," Roxy said as the shockwave rattled as the _Minerva_, "this is new."

In the captain's chair, Meyrin Hawke looked up at the grizzled man on the auxiliary screen—the man in the black uniform of the Phantom Pain.

"I must say," he said sardonically, "you're not what I was expecting in the captain of the ship that's given me so much trouble."

Meyrin arched her eyebrow and touched the visor of her peaked cap. "What's the purpose of this transmission, captain...?"

"Danilov," the man supplied. "The purpose is simple. Take a look at your tactical map. About half of the surviving ZAFT fleet is in full retreat; the other half is trapped here with no escape, and is currently about to get completely wiped out." He sat back. "Now, as I'm sure you're aware, I'm under orders to destroy you on sight. But I think we can agree that this ZAFT force is the greater threat, and its escaped survivors need to be eliminated. So, if I were to not see you..."

"How do I know you aren't going to chase us down anyway?" Meyrin responded.

"You don't. And I make no guarantees. So," Danilov smirked conspiratorially, "consider this a head start."

Meyrin eyed the man on the monitor carefully for a moment. "Don't think you're going to have it easy if you find us again."

"I'm sure. And, before you go," Danilov broke into a sportsman's grin, "would you care to indulge me and tell me the name of my adversary? Fair is fair, after all."

Memories returned in Meyrin's mind of the massacre at Volgograd—but if this was the same captain, then the same captain who had ordered those shots was the one ostensibly giving her an avenue to escape this battle and offering to finish off the ZAFT forces remaining. And once she got away, the _Minerva_ could easily hunt down the remaining ZAFT ships of this task force and then slip away into the Debris Belt. The man in command at Volgograd couldn't be this same man.

And yet here he was, asking for the name of his adversary. Asking for the name of this ship's captain.

"Hawke," she said at last.

Danilov smirked back. "Then I look forward to our next battle, Captain Hawke."

The screen went dark, the tension on the bridge rippled, and Meyrin glanced back at the main screen. "Roxy, recall our mobile suits and inform the _Ortygia_. Malik, set our course after the retreating ZAFT ships. We have a mission to complete."

—

To be continued...


	19. Phase 19: Gathering Swords

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note: So this was rather late. For that, you can blame FFN's login section going down for most of the day.

Also, since judging by the reviews the cat is out of the bag, I do indeed have a deviantART page: unoservix (dot) deviantart (dot) com. There you will find some pictures of some of the mecha I mention in this story. You will also find ponies, because ponies are awesome.

—

Phase 19 - Gathering Swords

—

**May 4th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, outside Sagan City, the Moon**

The last remaining _Laurasia_ frigate cracked in half and exploded under the _Charlemagne_'s tempest of firepower. As the lime-green hull vanished behind a sheet of fire, Ivan Danilov sat back on his ship's bridge and watched impassively. Only a handful of mobile suits remained, and Danilov rather hoped that they would decide to go down fighting. Prisoners would present a serious problem—and dying in a glorious blaze in battle was probably better than what was in store for them as the Phantom Pain's captives.

He glanced up towards the tactical map as he saw movement from the other Alliance ship in the area—the _Lucifer_. That _Agamemnon_-class that had shown up earlier had already slipped away in the confusion of the _Charlemagne_'s entrance, but the _Lucifer_ was quitting the battle as well—and heading after the _Minerva_.

Naturally. Joaquin wanted himself a piece of glory. The jowly officer's face appeared as though on cue on the auxiliary screen.

"Captain Danilov," he sneered, "I see most of the work has been done for you already."

"As long as the city is safe," Danilov answered. 'What is it, colonel?"

"I am pursuing the _Minerva_," Joaquin replied. "Circumstances cost us a shot at destroying them here, but we cannot pass up another."

Danilov glanced again at the tactical map. "Colonel, the _Minerva_ is pursuing the survivors of the ZAFT force here who escaped. They are doing our work for us, yes—and absorbing the risks. If they can destroy the ZAFT survivors, who are we to stop them?"

Joaquin narrowed his eyes. "Captain, I think you forget your orders. I expect you to join us once you've finished exterminating these stragglers. _Lucifer_, out."

The screen flipped off and Danilov sat back with a sigh. Captain Hawke better not have been expecting an easy way out of this, because she certainly would not get it.

—

Sven Cal Bayan ground his teeth as he felt the Crusader's feet slam down onto the Moon's surface and a cloud of dust kicked up around him. Herding Yukiko into the observation deck had not paid off here—not since the battle was so far away from the ship. So he would have to wait.

One of the last ZAKUs lunged up from behind a dusty ridge and charged with its beam tomahawk held high—only to be cut to shreds by a beam volley from above, and the Vanguard landed with a crash next to the Crusader.

"Hey Sven, wake up in there," Shams called out. "There's still a squad left. We're flanking them but we're going to need a fast unit for the linkup."

Sven nodded and the Crusader vaulted upward, with the Vanguard not far behind.

"Man, what's gotten into you?" grumbled Shams. "You're more emo than usual."

"It's not your concern," Sven shot back.

"The hell you say. If you get your ass shot down it sure as fuck _will_ be my concern."

Sven scowled back. "I told you. It's not your concern."

The Crusader's eyes flashed, it activated its beam wings with a wave of light, and the Gundam rocketed back into the fray.

—

The lone surviving ZAKU Warrior went down with a crash, and Travis Alterman grit his teeth as he put the Nebula Blitz's beam saber through its cockpit. Fire rushed out of the opening and the red Gundam backed away as its mortally wounded opponent succumbed to a fiery death.

He glanced around the battlefield, at the dim red smoke and smoldering wreckage of warships and mobile suits. This had been a few drops of water to a parched man in the desert. Enough to remind him of what it felt like to drink deeply, but in no way a substitute.

That meant he would have to think and be all intellectual, and he _hated_ that.

Travis glanced up towards the looming _Charlemagne_ as it hovered over the battlefield, the undeniable victor. Of course the good captain had ignored his orders to engage the _Minerva_ on sight. And the more pragmatic of his superiors would understand why, but you couldn't just go ignoring orders in the Phantom Pain—especially orders against its nimble nemesis. The more Travis saw of this man in action, the more he became convinced that he would make a terrible commander for the Phantom Pain. Lord Djibril's army required ruthlessness to make the world bend to its master's will, and Ivan Danilov was not a ruthless man.

Most vexing, he reflected, was that if Ivan Danilov was a more ruthless man, then Travis and his frustrated Nebula Blitz might get to see more action. And that was the most annoying part of this spy business.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

"The enemy's flagship has survived, along with two _Laurasia_-class frigates and the _Eternal_-class cruiser," Rau explained on the _Minerva_'s bridge, with Meyrin and Abbey on the other side of the mapping console. A wire-grid display stretched before them, with the survivors of the ZAFT task force clawing their way out of the fray, away from the Moon, into Earth orbit. Rau glanced back down at it and saw the trap snapping shut. "Number of mobile suits is unknown, but can be assumed to be about three dozen. The enemy is most likely reeling from its losses." He looked back up at Meyrin. "They'll have nowhere to go."

Meyrin, for her part, looked considerably less than assured. And Rau could understand why—because speeding after them was the black _Archangel_-class that had shown up at Arnhelm and Terminal and Sagan City. And now it was clearly in pursuit.

And there was the _Charlemagne_ as well. Rau glanced over Meyrin's face as he supposed she considered the specter of her formidable rival. That was a good enough reason to fear, perhaps.

But there was something else to her presence, a different kind of uncertainty—one directed at him. Why would she feel uncertain about him? That was an easy question: Shinn had told her something. But that could be remedied.

"If the enemy attempts to escape into the Debris Belt," Rau continued, "there is a technique we can use with the Tannhäuser." Meyrin and Abbey both looked up at that, interest piqued. "'Scattershot.' Target the debris around the enemy with the Tannhäuser, and the destructive properties of antimatter will set off a chain reaction. If the explosions themselves don't inflict damage, the shrapnel thrown around by the blasts will."

"The Debris Belt isn't that dense," Abbey said with a shake of her head.

"In some parts, it is," Rau countered, "and the enemy is likeliest to use those areas as shields against our other weapons. If all else fails, the positron cannon will force them out into range of the ship's other weapons."

Meyrin looked back down at the map, and Rau felt the uncertainty begin to dissipate.

_A clever flanking maneuver, Shinn, but I am not that stupid._

—

Shinn Asuka stared up somberly at the silent Gundam Eclipse in the _Minerva_'s bustling hangar. Emily had fought Kira Yamato to a standstill with this machine. She hadn't beat him—not quite—but this new power of hers against that improved Freedom...with this power she might have destroyed Kira Yamato.

He turned his thoughts towards his archenemy. The pathetic man that was gassing colonies and slinking through the shadows. But soon, Shinn told himself, he would have a new mobile suit of his own, one that could stand up to that new Freedom—and soon he would be able to close that chapter of his life. It was a chapter he needed to close, he knew; he couldn't stand being haunted by the ghosts of dead friends and comrades forever.

He glanced over as Athrun landed on the gantry next to him. "Well," he said, "she had quite a day today."

Athrun cast a grim look at the Eclipse's silent face. "But she didn't kill him."

"No, she didn't."

"I guess destiny is reserving that for one of us."

Shinn leaned back against the railing and glanced over towards the GOUF Ignited across the hangar. "My talk with Meyrin didn't go too well either."

"What—why not?"

"Meyrin wanted proof. And how are you supposed to prove that he's been trying to destroy the world?" He shook his head. "I don't really have any. Just what you've said. And...well, looking at it from her point of view, it's kind of a crazy thing to say."

Athrun scowled over at the GOUF. "Not if you know him."

"Yeah, but we don't. Or, well, I don't. In ZAFT I only met him once, at the Academy, when he gave some lectures about mobile suit tactics." He shook his head. "Figures, he had to be some big war hero."

"Well, we have to do something about him. If what you said is true..."

"I know." Shinn glared over at Rau's empty GOUF. "One is bad enough."

—

"They've been asleep forever," Stella Loussier sighed outside the _Minerva_'s sickbay as the door slid shut. Roxy glanced over her shoulder at the sullen Extended.

"It's so they'll heal," she explained. "They'll be back on their feet faster this way."

Stella looked unconvinced and Roxy shoved her hands into her pockets and mentally searched for another soothing platitude. At the very least, the drugs and healing factors would kick in faster if neither Sting nor Auel—especially Auel, probably—were conscious for it...but the halls of the _Minerva_ were a bit lonelier now that they weren't filled with two cranky Extended cussing at each other.

"When will they wake up?" Stella asked suddenly, and Roxy shrugged.

"When they're better."

"When will that be?"

"I dunno."

A put-out Stella turned away and glanced forlornly at the infirmary door before she drifted off down the corridor. Roxy glanced after her and heaved a sigh. Of course, take away the two most disagreeable members of the ship's crew and the whole thing goes to pot.

But she was feeling the itch to see her friends back on their feet. Alcoholic intolerance aside, they made good drinking partners—and with all the angst and drama on the rest of the ship, she knew she needed a good drinking partner or two.

—

The sound of a foot landing on the gantry outside caught Emily's attention, followed by the telltale distortion of an Extended, and she didn't even need to look up to know that Lily was there.

On the Eclipse's cockpit hatch, Lily stood with crossed arms and a petulant look on her face. "You've been working in there all day. When are you going to come out?"

Emily shrugged back. "I'm busy."

"You're _always_ busy."

"Well, giant robots are high-maintenance." She frowned down at the console and the bewildering array of values for the Eclipse's Voiture Lumiere drive, and the brick-like manual in her lap. "Especially this one."

Lily pouted for a moment. "Trojan says you're acting funny."

"Am I?"

"You are! You're all broody and depressed. It's not cool. Stop it."

Emily smiled sadly. "It's more complicated than that, Lily."

"No it's not! You just have to stop thinking about the stuff that's making you sad." She flashed a cheeky grin. "That's what _I_ do."

"And how do you do that?"

Lily's smile disappeared and Emily seized the chance to return to her work. "Well...uh, you just don't," the Extended answered after a moment's thought. "Hey! Pay attention! This is important!" She dropped her hands down onto the Eclipse's console. "How come you're being all bummed out?"

"It's complicated."

"Oh come on!" Emily glanced up in surprise at the feeling of hurt from the young Extended. "_Everyone_ says that! How can it be so complicated that I can't understand it?"

Well, that was hard to argue with—but Emily glanced away all the same. She would have to figure these things out for herself before she could go telling everybody else about them. "I'll tell you later."

Lily frowned. "Later?"

"Yes, later."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

Lily looked unconvinced, but stepped away anyway and regarded Emily skeptically for a moment. Then she pushed off the cockpit hatch, and left Emily to sit back and sigh, her work forgotten.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_

With the vast sweep of the Debris Belt before them and four ZAFT warships, plus the _Minerva_, somewhere up ahead, Joaquin felt profoundly jittery as the _Lucifer_ cruised into the debris field. Fighting in the Debris Belt was to space combat what fighting in a forest or a city was to ground combat—and the _Minerva_ in particular had always used this vast shoal zone to its advantage.

He peered ahead. The four ZAFT vessels would likely be off balance, and if the calculations were right the _Minerva_ would probably have them decimated by the time the _Lucifer_ arrived. But a desperate foe was a foe that frequently confounded calculations, and Joaquin knew that those ZAFT survivors must have been starting to get desperate.

In the captain's chair, Ortega glanced over. "The _Charlemagne_ is running behind us by an hour. Should we hold until they show up?"

Joaquin snorted. "Of course not. They'll all get away if we wait. Danilov will just have to come through."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Then we'll take down the _Minerva_ ourselves. ND HE and the Hyperion Gs can handle it."

Ortega cast Joaquin a skeptical glance, but the latter did not notice and instead stared ahead intently into the Debris Belt. They had slipped through his fingers too many times—and they were carrying his career off with them. But not this time.

—

Morgan Chevalier had to admit that the _Lucifer_'s technicians had done well with the slender mobile suit before him. With the body of the Windam, the wings of the Aile Striker, and the four violet gunbarrels of the Exus mobile armor, the Fenrir was several steps above his old Windam—and that was what he would need against that formidable new Gundam the Resistance was fielding. It had torn his mobile suit to pieces at Terminal, but now the Fenrir would have a chance to bare its fangs and let loose its howl across the battlefield.

He glanced across the hangar, where the _Lucifer_'s other mobile suit with a Gundam's face sat waiting. The Raigo Gundam had the masked ND HE floating in front of it, and even with the mask and flight suit, Morgan could see in him the look of a cornered animal, coiled and ready to pounce.

That, really, was the most sickening thing about the Extended. Training people to fight was one thing—it was something he had done himself, and had done to others. But leaving people with no ability other than to fight? It was not as though the Extended were ever intended to be discharged or something anyway, but that powerlessness, that deciding of one's destiny, that kind of engineering of human life...wasn't that what Blue Cosmos railed against in the Coordinators?

Of course, as his memories returned of his Windam being dismembered by the Resistance's blindingly fast new mobile suit, it wasn't as though Coordinators were the only ones with superior abilities. The new Gundam had the same pilot as that old Twilight and its elusive Angel of Death.

Morgan returned his gaze to the Raigo, and its masked pilot. ND HE...a man whose destiny had been decided by another. That was the essence of the Extended.

But, the Moonlight Mad Dog reminded himself, Colonel Joaquin was not the only man who could decide destiny.

—

**May 5th, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Debris Belt, orbit of Earth**

Bathed in the eerie cold light of the monitor, Varder Ehrmacht stared intently at the combat footage of that blinding, ever-unstoppable Gundam Eclipse. Those bursts of speed, those intricate maneuvers, that precise swordsmanship...it had all matched the Vice Marshal himself blow for blow. And then Operation _Hell's Wind_ had ended in failure right before Kira Yamato himself.

Over Varder's shoulder, Lilith glanced down uncomfortably at him. "You've been staring at that footage for two hours, Varder."

"Someone has to."

"Yeah, but nobody's gonna beat that kid like this." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. Let's get something to eat."

Varder waved her off. "Go without me. I've got stuff to do."

"Like sit in here and stare at combat footage?" Lilith crossed her arms. "What's up with all this, anyway?"

"She humiliated us, Lil," Varder said, and his fists tightened. "She's been doing that a lot, I must say. Either she's pulling some surprise trick out of her ass or she's just slaughtering us." He looked up at her with fire flickering in his eyes. "Would our operation have failed if that kid hadn't tied up Yamato the whole time?"

"Oh come on, Varder," Lilith sighed, "it was such a long shot and you know it." She waved at the screen. "Anyway, you're going to get a rematch pretty soon. The _Minerva_ is catching up and we both know what they want."

Varder glowered back at the screen. "Yes, we do."

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_**, orbit of Earth**

The sight of a panicking man was always so unseemly—and double for the already unpleasant-to-look-at Commander Glasgow.

Leons Graves sat back stoically on the _Caernafon_'s bridge as Glasgow frantically handed out orders, to the _Caernafon_ and the two ships surviving, the _Vacquier _and the _Averroes_. The _Seraphim_ was off to the side, apparently doing its own thing, but Graves knew he would be sitting this battle out. The failure at Sagan City had shattered Glasgow's trust, and without that there wasn't much left for Graves to do.

Which, of course, was why he had spent much of this little journey preparing his Civilian Astray for a quick escape should the need arise. No sense getting killed in the service of some abstract ideal like loyalty. That was just bad business.

With the mighty _Minerva_ bearing down on a handful of demoralized, isolated warships, the conclusion seemed foregone. But there were Alliance ships in pursuit too, so as long as the battle could be prolonged until their arrival, the problem might solve itself. There was always a bigger fish.

In the meantime, Graves listened idly to what seemed to be Glasgow's battle plan. The _Minerva_ was on the verge of catching up—hell, it was probably beginning to launch its mobile suits. When it did, and when they attacked, the _Caernafon_ and friends would steadily retreat back into the Debris Belt, before scattering and peppering the wreckage with anti-beam depth charges and missiles on timed fuses. They would rendezvous elsewhere and then slip away as the _Minerva_ dealt with an exploding cloud of anti-beam gas.

A clever plan, but would the _Minerva_ be fooled, or held off for that long? If not, Graves had a few plans after all—because that, after all, was _good_ business.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, orbit of Earth**

"Targets in range," Burt announced from the sensor console as the _Minerva_'s bridge sank down into its combat state. "Distance, 4500 and closing. Enemy is on course for the Debris Belt and launching mobile suits."

At her station, Abbey peered forward thoughtfully. "So they're just going to melt through the wreckage."

"Not if we have anything to say about it," Meyrin said. "Tristans, Isolde, Neidhardt, target the space around the enemy warships and fire. We'll force them around and hit them with the Tannhäuser."

The _Minerva_'s guns boomed and its missiles arced through space towards the four ZAFT warships, which plunged to the side and threw up a wall of CIWS fire.

"Okay guys," Roxy said at her console, "for those who don't know, fighting over the atmosphere is just like fighting in space normally, except you have to keep a close eye on the altitude or you'll get pulled into the gravity well. So don't fuck up. Ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Emily's voice answered. Meyrin glanced up at the red-haired comm officer and nodded.

"Then let's kick some ass!"

The winged battleship shuddered as its catapults fired, the Destiny and Gaia went rocketing out, and Meyrin sat back and steeled herself for a fight.

—

Trojan Noiret threw his DOM Trooper forward with a shout, beam sabers on the end of his rifle blazing. Up ahead, a crimson Blaze ZAKU Warrior flung up its shield to deflect the blow—only for Trojan to level off the DOM's Gigalauncher in its left hand and spear the ZAKU through the cockpit on a beam bolt. But from the flames a Slash ZAKU plunged down towards him with a sweeping swipe from its beam axe, and Trojan jammed the DOM backward to dodge the blow.

The ZAKU charged forward, but a moment later a wave of beams plowed through it and tore it to flaming shreds—and in a silver blur, the Vent Savior Gundam shot by in mobile armor mode.

"Not having such a great day, are ya, Undefeated of the East?" giggled Lily.

Trojan frowned back. "The hell you talking about?"

"Ah, I'll explain later." The Vent Savior arced upward and went spiraling after the ZAFT warships. Trojan shook his head and returned his attention to the oncoming team of red ZAKUs—the ones from the black _Eternal_-class cruiser. A Gunner ZAKU sent a shimmering blast of red plasma streaming towards the DOM; Trojan threw his green mobile suit aside and returned fire with his own rifle and Gigalauncher, only for another Blaze ZAKU to streak in from above with its beam rifle blazing. Trojan pulled back behind his beam shield, sparks flying around him, and waited for his opportunity.

—

"We'll do this the way we planned," Shinn said, clenching his fists around the Destiny's controls as his Gundam sailed into battle. "There's an old warship wreck up there."

Stella smiled. "Stella knows what to do."

With that, the Gaia whirled out of formation and set down softly on the charred hulk of an Alliance warship. Shinn glanced up ahead, at the force of ZAFT mobile suits on its approach. He could feel their fear, at last outweighing their anger. They were discouraged and desperate, and now there were well over a dozen on their way in, weapons primed. They raised their guns and opened fire—

The seed burst, the beam wings snapped to life, and the Destiny roared forward with sword drawn.

A wall of afterimages rushed up around the Gundam as it danced around its enemies' beam fire, and with a resounding shriek, the Destiny rushed in and slashed its first victim in half. The bisected ZAKU exploded—only for another with a Gunner Wizard to back away and level off its cannon. The Destiny blasted forward, slammed its left-hand palm cannon clear through the ZAKU's cannon, and then ripped it in two with a sword stroke. A Blaze ZAKU lunged up from behind, beam rifle leveled off, and Shinn spared it a glance—

...just as a beam blast from the far-off Gaia Gundam plowed through it from the right and blew it apart. Shinn backflipped over the cloud of flames and rushed down after the survivors, who had all backed away for distance and let loose a shimmering barrage of beam fire.

"Three of you down," Shinn grunted—and slammed down the booster as he saw his chance— "_And here's four!_" The closest ZAKU seized its beam tomahawk and flung itself forward with a downward hack—the Destiny pounded the blade to the side with its sword, then slammed its palm cannon into the ZAKU's chest, and blew apart the green mobile suit. A wave of beam fire raced out from the darkness and claimed a fifth ZAKU, and as the ZAFT mobile suits backpedaled, the Destiny seized its chance to rip another in two.

Shinn scanned the ten remaining mobile suits, waiting for them to make the next move, the fear pulsing from their cockpits.

"Did you guys really think you could do this without being punished?" he asked quietly. The ZAKUs broke their formation and opened fire; the Destiny snaked its way through their blasts and charged. "'cuz today I'll show you the same mercy you showed _them!_"

—

The Infinite Justice rattled as a wave of missiles detonated around it; Athrun gritted his teeth and glowered through the flames at the squad of Blaze ZAKU Warriors unloading their missiles into his Gundam's Phase Shift armor. But it would take more than that to take down even his own hobbled mobile suit; the Justice switched its rifle to its left hand and drew a beam saber in its freed right—

With a blast of thruster exhaust, the Justice rushed out of the flames, fired forward its anchor, yanked the first ZAKU close, and chopped it in two with his saber. The remaining five pulled away with a desperate wave of firepower; Athrun dove through the blasts and fired back with his own rifle.

Below loomed one of the two surviving _Laurasia_-class frigates, guns turned up towards the Justice. The warship let loose a fearful fusillade; Athrun scowled and threw his Gundam into the open spaces between the shots.

"Let's see you follow me!" Athrun shouted, and plunged down towards the desperate warship. The ZAKUs hesitantly followed and opened fire—only for a stray railgun shot to blow away one of their number.

The Justice roared down towards the warship and darted aside from a pulsing beam cannon blast. With a crash it swept in and peppered the ship's hull with beam rifle shots, then darted aside from another beam cannon blow. One of the ZAKUs dove in from behind, a beam axe blazing and ready for battle—Athrun whipped around to stop the blade cold with a saber swipe. The _Laurasia_ angled its guns to fire—

Instead, Athrun jetted backward, pulling the ZAKU with him, and then darted upward—just in time for the _Laurasia_'s beam cannon blast to vaporize the ZAKU. And before it could follow up with another shot, the Justice swept down with a beam rifle barrage of its own and punched a blast through the ship's bridge. The stricken vessel reeled back as flames gushed out like blood from its wounded prow; a moment later it shuddered again, as Athrun tore apart the ship's upper surface with beam fire and sent the ship staggering off the battlefield, towards the atmosphere.

The ZAKUs charged; Athrun cast a glance towards them and took off towards the next warship.

—

"Don't think you've defeated us yet!" cried Varder Ehrmacht as his Proto Gaia brought down its saber onto the Gundam Eclipse's shining beam sword. "You can kill grunts, but you haven't killed _me!_"

Emily ground her teeth as the sparks flew. "I certainly still _could,_" she shot back—only for the instinct of danger to rise up her spine. She hurled the Proto Gaia forward with sheer thruster power and whipped around, just in time to face the missiles and beam blasts of the charging Proto Savior. "_And you too!_"

With a flash from its eyes, the Eclipse waved its hand and the missiles arced away to explode harmlessly around the combatants. The Proto Savior charged forward, beam cannons blazing; the Eclipse rocketed up, closed the distance, and slammed its sword down into the mobile suit's giant backpack. It vanished with a blaze and the Proto Savior itself staggered out of the flames, just as the Proto Gaia pressed the attack with its saber.

"That was only the Ratha parts!" screamed Lilith, as the Proto Savior went on the attack with a beam barrage of its own. The Eclipse snaked its way through the blasts, parried a blow from the Proto Gaia, and then whipped around and sawed the Proto Savior's beam rifle in two. "Dammit! You—!"

"I don't have time for you two," Emily growled; the Proto Gaia slammed its own saber down onto the Eclipse's sword. "And I've killed better people than you, so just get out of here now."

In the Proto Gaia's cockpit, Varder Ehrmacht trembled with rage, his fists tightening around the mobile suit's controls, his teeth grinding. "You're going to just _dismiss_ me like that?" The Proto Gaia charged forward with a series of furious saber swings. "_Me?_ Of all people?" The red mobile suit brought its saber down with an eruption of sparks. "You little _bitch!_ You have no idea who I am! I'm the Widowmaker of Mars!" The Proto Gaia surged forward, into a vicious swordfight with the Eclipse. "At Mars I personally destroyed twenty mobile suits in one battle—and you have the gall to _blow me off?_"

Emily scowled back and glanced down at the altitude reading, and then over her shoulder—where the Proto Savior was sweeping in for the kill. "You aren't on Mars anymore."

With that, the Eclipse pushed off from the Gaia, whipped around, and slashed off the Proto Savior's left arm and left-hand plasma cannon as it passed by. The Proto Gaia charged instead with a scream from its pilot and a furious saber swing—but the Eclipse ducked below the blow and then jerked upward, and with an ear-splitting shriek, it claimed the Proto Gaia's left leg at the knee, its left-hand hip armor, its left wing, and its left arm at the shoulder.

"Have you had enough yet?" Emily asked, as she glanced at the tactical map. "Because I really _don't_ have time for you."

"_You aren't going anywhere!_" shrieked Varder, and it plunged down after the Eclipse with a blaze of exhaust.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

"ETA to combat range is fifteen minutes," the sensor officer announced. On the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, Danilov sat back and glanced to starboard, where the _Lucifer_ was already opening its catapults. Joaquin was starving for glory and would seize on any scrap he could lay hands on. Just as well, though—maybe that would make him more effective.

Up ahead, he could see that the ZAFT force had already lost one ship and was in the process of losing another. That black _Eternal_-class cruiser had slipped away to the edge of the battlefield and looked about ready to escape, but that could be accepted. It could be hunted down later. One ship with assuredly off-balance and demoralized troops could be dealt with.

And then there was the _Minerva_, ruthlessly tearing apart the enemy—but not fast enough. Now the _Charlemagne_ and the _Lucifer_ were here, and Captain Hawke would have to find a way out of two high-end Alliance warships cornering her in the Debris Belt, with the gravity well at her back.

_Well, the more hopeless things get, the better you seem to work,_ he reflected. _So let's give each other a fight to remember, Captain Hawke._

He leaned forward. "All hands, prepare for anti-ship and anti-mobile suit combat!"

—

Sven Cal Bayan stopped on his way to the hangar in the _Charlemagne_'s corridors at the feeling of a hand on his arm. He glanced over—and felt his blood run cold as he saw Yukiko reaching out from a side hallway, a stern look on her face.

"Are you going to do it this time?" Sven blinked and for a moment wondered if she had found out. "Destroy the Destiny?"

Sven wrenched his arm free. "I will do as my duty requires."

"You're more than that," Yukiko shot back. "The Crusader will _make_ you more than that. You're the Earth Sphere's hope." She paused. "Have you thought about my proposal?"

"I will _not_ be turned into an Extended," Sven snarled. "Nor will I take Gamma Glipheptin or in any way surrender control over myself. That is final."

Yukiko frowned back. "You're selling yourself short. You could maximize the Crusader's potential as an Extended. And you could defeat the Destiny, decisively, once and for all, so they can't bring it back."

Sven whirled around. "I will defeat the Destiny myself," he shot back, "without interference."

"I'll be watching."

"Of course you will."

He pushed off down the hallway and clenched his fists around his helmet.

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Caernafon**_

His heart raced as he looked out the bridge windows again at the _Vacquier_, as its mangled hull disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere. The _Minerva_ was unstoppable. Even with its diminished mobile suit contingent, it was gutting his forces; how formidable had they been, then, back when they had all eight of those alleged Gundams?

Glasgow shook his head and, with great effort, pushed away the fear. The _Minerva_ could still be eluded. The Debris Belt was close at hand; all he had to do was distract them long enough to slip away into the wreckage. That wouldn't be too hard—would it?

Another of his mobile suits exploded somewhere outside, and for a moment he saw the flickering afterimages of the Destiny Gundam, and terror raced through him.

"Graves," he said quietly, "what do you suggest?" Silence answered him. "Graves?" He glanced over...

...and found nothing but an empty chair.

—

A stricken _Laurasia_-class frigate, the one that Rau Le Creuset recognized as the _Averroes_, listed to starboard up above. A handful of ZAKUs remained by the ship's cratered hull, bravely pouring firepower after his GOUF Ignited.

The GOUF ducked down between the walls of firepower thrown up by the ZAKUs. Up ahead, the green mobile suits moved forward as their warship belched smoke and fire; the first came charging forward with a barrage of missiles from its Blaze Wizard. Rau expertly cut them down with a beam gun salvo; the ZAKU came rushing up from below the blasts, rifle leveled off—

Instead, Rau seized his chance to slam the GOUF forward and slice the ZAKU in half at the waist with his beam sword before it could react. The remaining three up above poured firepower after him, but came up empty-handed—

"_Minerva_, now!" Rau roared.

From the winged warship came a shimmering quartet of beam blasts, and the Tristan blasts slammed straight through the crippled _Laurasia_ and blasted it apart with a thundering explosion. One of the ZAKUs vanished in the blaze; the other two scrambled for distance, but Rau lunged up over one of them and cut it in two. The survivor whirled around with its rifle ready, only for the GOUF to chop it in two; the ZAKU resorted to its beam tomahawk and slammed it down onto the GOUF's spiked shield.

"Well fought," Rau chuckled, "but not enough!"

The ZAKU shuddered as the GOUF slammed its sword through the cockpit. Rau drew it out, kicked the dying mobile suit away, and watched it explode, satisfied.

—

The Proto Savior shuddered as the Gundam Eclipse claimed its right leg at the knee with a powerful downward sword hack. The black mobile suit staggered away, sparks spewing from its wounds. Emily glanced over her shoulder and whirled around to smack aside the Proto Gaia's saber; she turned again to deflect the Proto Savior's blow, and then rocketed over the two wounded mobile suits.

"You think that Gundam makes you better than me?" Varder shouted. "I'll show you, little girl! A superior mobile suit has its limits against a superior pilot!"

The Proto Gaia charged, beam saber held upward—

Instead, blindingly fast, the Eclipse closed the gap between them, slashed off its right arm at the elbow, and sent the rest of the mobile suit reeling with a lightning-fast kick to the chest. Emily swung up her beam sword for a lethal blow and burst forward—

The Proto Savior lunged up into her path and deployed its remaining plasma cannon to be sliced in two by the Eclipse's beam sword. The rush of fire sent the Eclipse staggering back—and as Emily hacked the cloud apart, she saw the Proto Savior seize the ruined Proto Gaia with its remaining arm and rocket into the Debris Belt as fast as its remaining engines would carry it.

Emily sat back with a sigh, staring after that retreating, pulsing point of hatred.

—

With four ZAKUs left, Shinn scanned the black skies for his next target—and found, looming far ahead, the cerulean hull of a _Nazca_-class destroyer, the last warship on the field.

"Stella! Cover me!" The Destiny somersaulted over the remaining ZAKUs and then blasted off towards the destroyer. The four ZAKUs followed, only for one of them to be blown apart from a blast from afar by Stella. The three survivors turned their shields towards the Gaia and their rifles towards the Destiny, and one of them rocketed after the latter Gundam. Shinn glanced over his shoulder—an instant later he whipped around, sword upraised, and sawed the ZAKU in half.

"Stella will finish the rest!" Stella cried, and the Gaia lunged out of hiding with a beam saber lit. Shinn turned again, sword drawn, and went charging towards the _Nazca_.

"Then it's just down to you!" shouted Shinn, and with a flash the Destiny darted through the warship's desperate fire. He plunged the sword down into the ship's hull, smashing one of its beam cannons—and then, as sparks and shrapnel flew, he whipped up the Destiny's long-range cannon and poured a blast through the ship's bridge, and another through the engines.

As fire tore the vessel apart, a mobile suit lunged out of the splintering hangar. Shinn watched it go, catching sight of its purple armor and the distinct snake symbol on its shoulder armor. A flash of recognition shot through him—the Destiny vaulted up after the retreating Civilian Astray and dodged the desperate fire from its beam gun.

"So!" Shinn cried. "_You're_ the rat that's responsible for all this, huh? Leons Graves!"

"I'm just a mercenary!" Graves shot back. "If you want someone to blame, blame ZAFT!"

"Don't try to worm your way out of this, you son of a bitch," Shinn snarled—and with a flash of afterimages and thruster exhaust, the Destiny charged forward. "Capture is too good for you," the Destiny raised its sword, "so I'll just be the executioner _myself!_"

The Civilian Astray lurched back and drew a beam saber to spoil the Destiny's sword strike. Shinn frowned at the sound of Graves' desperate laughter. "Oh, not like that, Asuka," he chuckled, "you're going to have to do better if you want to kill me."

Shinn smirked back. "Alright."

The Destiny surged forward and flung the Civilian Astray back. Graves leveled off his beam gun to fire—but the sky filled with afterimages and his scream of terror as the Destiny lunged up above him and dropped back down with a devastating sword slice that chopped his Civilian Astray in two.

Leons Graves and his Civilian Astray vanished in a blast of fire and Shinn let out his breath. He cast a glance back towards the battlefield, where Stella had handily finished off the two surviving ZAKUs. The ZAFT force looked to be completely gone, so—

The instinct jolted him and he threw the Destiny back, just as a beam rifle blast sizzled by. He glanced towards the stars—

Up ahead, in front of the massive _Charlemagne_ and the black _Archangel_, beam wings spread, eyes blazing, the Crusader Gundam went on the attack.

—

To be continued...


	20. Phase 20: To Earth

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 20 - To Earth

—

**May 5th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, orbit of Earth**

"_That's_ not good," groaned Roxy as the image came into focus on the auxiliary screen. Storming into view were the mobile suits of the black _Archangel_ and the _Charlemagne_, and the warships themselves hovered at the edge of the Debris Belt—and closing in.

Meyrin glanced over at Abbey. "I suppose we can try the Pinball Machine," she offered. Abbey looked back diffidently.

"We'd be sacrificing a lot of missiles."

"We'll be sacrificing a lot of missiles anyway." She looked back down towards a waiting Chen. "Eject the prepared missiles and move them into the Debris Belt, behind some of the wreckage. Make sure the fuses are set to remote detonation."

As Chen set to work, Meyrin glanced back up at the auxiliary screen. Of course, this would depend on the enemy captains being dumb enough to fall for this. The captain of that black _Archangel_, possibly—hopefully—but Danilov?

_Well,_ she thought bitterly, _I _did_ tell you it wouldn't be easy._

—

Athrun Zala fixed his eyes on the fast-approaching Arrowhead Raigo Gundam, charging towards him with its eyes ablaze and Kira Yamato's distorted presence pulsing from within. The memories of Kira came rushing back; Athrun forced them down. It would be all too easy to simply disable the Raigo, capture its pilot, and try to create a new Kira, a Kira who hadn't been led astray by Rau and turned into an enemy. To go back to a simpler time.

But that wouldn't be Kira. Athrun tightened his fists around the Infinite Justice's controls. Kira was gone, and this Extended before him would simply have to be destroyed.

The Raigo let loose a salvo of beams from its rifle and forced the Justice on the defensive. Athrun pulled back behind his beam shield as the Raigo closed in; he lunged forward, lit up one of the Justice's leg blades, and swung it towards the Raigo's head—

Instead, the blade crashed against the Raigo's shield, and Kira's voice filled the Justice's cockpit.

"You...you're the one who's been tormenting me!"

Athrun glanced around wide-eyed for a moment, before the auxiliary screen came to life—with a masked face staring back through a single green pentagonal eye. "I've been what?"

In the Raigo's cockpit, ND HE trembled with rage. "You've been torturing me," he snarled, "with these..._memories!_" The Raigo surged forward with a blast from its thrusters and forced the Justice back on the defensive with a volley of beam rifle shots. "I have these memories that I can't explain, and _you're_ in them!"

The Raigo stormed forward; Athrun seized his chance to lunge into its face, ignite one of the leg blades, and slash its beam rifle in two. He whipped around to bring his own rifle to bear on the Raigo's exposed back—only for the Raigo to whip around with a beam saber drawn and slice his own rifle apart. Athrun abandoned the weapon in favor of a beam saber and jammed the blade up to spoil the Raigo's downward hack.

"I can see you," snarled ND, "as a boy, with some little green bird!"

"With _Torii_?" Athrun breathed; the Justice crashed as the Raigo slammed its knee up into the red machine's torso.

"I have these memories as if we were friends!" ND screamed. "But we aren't! We never were! I don't know you, so," the Raigo charged, "_stay out of my memories, Athrun Zala!_"

Athrun swung his saber up to deflect another blow, as the memories returned to him as well. "You...have Kira's memories..."

"_I am not that man!_" ND HE roared, and with a crash it brought its saber down again onto the Justice's blade.

—

The Destiny Gundam danced across the black sky as the Crusader Gundam stormed after it, and the afterimages flew as the two Gundams slammed their swords together.

"I told you," growled Sven, "not to think that we were on your side."

Shinn smirked back. "What makes you think I ever did?"

The two Gundams darted apart and traded fire from their long-range cannons. Shinn threw the Destiny to the side as the Crusader poured fire after him—the white bolt flared before him and he flung his Gundam upward as two black Windams came streaking in from behind, beam rifles blazing. Another appeared behind him with a booming Doppelhorn Striker; a fourth with a Lightning Striker, electromagnetic cannon extended.

"All units, engage at will!" Sven cried, and the Crusader closed in with its sword upturned—

Instead, the Destiny dove to the side, whipped around, and sawed in two one of the Windams with its anti-ship sword. The three survivors backed away—and then a beam blast came barreling out of nowhere to blow away the Doppelhorn Windam.

Shinn glanced up in surprise as the Gaia Gundam roared into the fray. "Stella, stay back! These guys—!"

The Gaia lunged down and let loose a storm of beam rifle fire that forced the surviving Windams back. Sven ground his teeth and charged after the black Gundam, only for the Destiny to leap into his path and knock him aside with a powerful overhead sword hack.

"You're not going anywhere near _her_, jackass!" Shinn yelled.

"Then I won't," Sven shot back. "Shams, Mudie, engage the Gaia!"

From behind one of the larger pieces of wreckage, Shams' light blue Vanguard and Mudie's dark green and white Artemis Gundams lunged out with bright trails of thruster exhaust and lanced down towards the Gaia. Stella glowered up at them, leveled off her rifle, and opened fire.

Up above, the Crusader pressed its sword down against the Destiny's own. "Now, Asuka, I will deal with you."

Shinn glared back. "At least you're confident."

The Gundams flung each other apart and rocketed forward again to bring their swords crashing together.

—

Bolts of green energy sizzled by as three Hyperion G mobile suits poured relentless fire after Rau Le Creuset's winding GOUF Ignited. Fighting isolated and demoralized ZAFT soldiers had been one thing, but these troops were well-rested and better-equipped, and it had been a little too long since he had last fought Alliance soldiers.

One of the Hyperions closed in with a beam blade shining from its Zastava Stigmate machinegun. Rau whipped around and jammed his shield up to stop the blow; he flung up the GOUF's sword for a finishing blow, but the Hyperion rammed its knee into the GOUF's chest and then slammed it back with a kick that sent the ZAFT machine reeling. It moved in for the kill; Rau flung the GOUF back further and then jetted upward, and with a crash he sent his heat rod snaking down to curl around the Hyperion's machinegun and yank it from the mobile suit's grasp—

...and a moment later one of the Hyperions above fired its beam cannon and blew away the GOUF's left-hand heat rod.

"Suppose I should have seen _that_ coming," Rau sniffed as the Hyperions opened fire again. The first Hyperion charged in again with a drawn beam knife, blade extended to the length of a saber, and with a crash it swung the blade down against the GOUF's shield. Rau surged back with a sword slice at the Hyperion's waist, but the blue Alliance mobile suit jetted backward—just in time for the other two to slam the GOUF's shield with a wave of beam fire.

The GOUF backed away again and Rau scanned over his enemies, watching as they charged again.

—

A black Windam flung its ruined bazooka into the face of Trojan's DOM Trooper and switched to its beam rifle—only for Lily's Vent Savior Gundam to blow it to pieces with a wave of plasma fire. The remaining three Windams backed away, beam rifles leveled off—only for the two mobile suits to break apart, showering the Alliance units with beam fire. One of them ducked beneath the barrage and charged forward towards the DOM—

Trojan rocketed forward with a shout, lighting up the beam sabers on the end of his rifle, and slashed the Windam in two at the waist.

"Just two left," Lily started, "so let's—"

A barrage of beams tore through the space between the two mobile suits and forced them apart. The two Windams backed away as up above, five points of light materialized among the stars—and five mobile suits with the faces of Gundams came rushing in.

"Those things again," Trojan growled, "the ones from Arnhelm."

"Hey, those are the jerks that trashed my Strike!" Lily wailed. "I'm not forgiving them for that! Come on, let's kick their asses!"

The Vent Savior transformed and roared off towards the oncoming Gundams. Trojan steeled himself and followed.

—

"So," cackled Morgan Chevalier as his humming Fenrir soared into battle, "I must commend you, Miss Angel of Death, for what you've done at Copernicus and Sagan City. Side of righteousness and all."

In the Eclipse, beam sword blazing, Emily tensed as the Fenrir launched its gunbarrels and the remote weapons wove a web of green beams. She threw the Eclipse through the nearest opening and swung up her sword, just in time to avoid a saber blow from the Fenrir. It leveled off the beam rifle in its left hand; the Eclipse darted aside as it fired and charged again, falling into a spark-spewing swordfight with the Alliance machine.

"I'll confess some curiosity, though," Morgan went on, sparks dancing around the two mobile suits, "as to whether or not you're really my enemy." The Fenrir's eyes flashed and the mobile suit went on the offensive, with a volley of saber blows barely parried and a wave of gunbarrel fire barely dodged by the Eclipse. "So let's make it clear, right now, once and for all!" The Fenrir charged, saber blazing. "_Whose side are you on, Angel of Death?_"

Emily flung the Eclipse backward, dodging Morgan's final blow, and then slammed her Gundam forward again and pummeled the Fenrir's beam shield with her own sword. "I'm against the Alliance _and_ ZAFT," she shot back. "Both sides massacre innocent people!"

"Some might call that retaliation, kid!" Morgan laughed, and with a blast of sparks the Fenrir blocked another sword blow with its saber. "After all, the Resistance has been killing people all over, ever since this war started. Ever wonder how many of them were civilians? How much blood is on the Resistance's hands?"

Memories rippled through Emily's mind, of Novorossiysk, of the blistering deserts of Iraq, of Argus. "I've been killing _them_ too."

The Fenrir surged forward. "So I've heard!" Morgan roared with a grin. "Yes, we all know, you butchered a ZAFT remnant detachment that turned on the _Minerva!_ One might begin to question your loyalties, little girl! So I say again," the Fenrir came crashing down with another saber swing, "_whose side are you on?_"

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_

Joaquin sat back uncomfortably in his chair as the _Lucifer_ shook. The _Minerva_'s shots were random, or so it seemed, but they were getting unnervingly close to the hull of the ship—and there was still the question of why they had paused near the edge of the Debris Field and launched missiles into it. Offloading duds, perhaps—but intelligence indicated that the _Minerva_ had rarely had such an abysmal supply situation in previous engagements. What were the odds here?

"That laminated armor," grumbled Ortega from the captain's chair. "Valiants, target the enemy's engine block! Fire!"

The Valiants fired a volley of shells, but Joaquin could already tell they would miss as the _Minerva_ veered to the right. He glanced up at the auxiliary screen as Danilov's face appeared.

"_Lucifer_, change your attack vector; we're going to engage."

Ortega blinked in surprise. "Already? But the mobile suits—"

"Our pilots are of the Phantom Pain," Danilov said. "Surely they can deal with some close-quarters ship-to-ship action."

The screen went dark and Joaquin bit back a scowl. "Move the _Lucifer_ to port and resume fire on the _Minerva_," he instructed. "Let Danilov do as he pleases."

The _Lucifer_ rattled again from another near miss.

—

Sparks rained down on the two Gundams as their towering anti-ship swords met and the afterimages flared. Inside the Destiny, Shinn glowered up into the cold green eyes of the Crusader Gundam—and kept in the back of his mind the familiar presence of Stella, still on the battlefield, still alive, still defiant.

The Crusader surged forward and leveled off its long-range cannon; Shinn threw his beam shield up as the red blast slammed against its surface and drove him back. Afterimages flickering, the Crusader closed in with its sword raised high—only for Shinn to jam his own blade up into the path and leave the two Gundams with their swords slammed together above their heads.

Shinn blinked in surprise as a feeling went shooting up his spine—a feeling from inside the black and gray armor of that Earth Alliance mobile suit, a feeling from its pilot. Usually he felt nothing from this man but occasional frustration, but this time—it was not like him to feel this tension, this fear.

He licked his lips. "What's got _you_ so afraid?"

The Crusader flung the Destiny back with its sword and stormed forward again for another vicious, sweeping swordfight. The Destiny rattled as it blocked and deflected each ponderous blow amid a cyclone of mirages. "I am afraid of nothing," Sven snarled back, and with finality he slammed the Crusader's Schwert Gewehr sword onto the Destiny's blade and drove the older Gundam back. "You are the one who should be in fear. I defeated you with this mobile suit last time we fought."

"Yeah, well, that was then," Shinn answered with a smirk.

Sven scowled and hefted his sword, and the Crusader closed in. "Then I will put the fear back in you!"

Shinn felt the energy before he saw it, flung the Destiny to the side, and then pounded the Crusader's sword with as hard a horizontal swipe as he could manage. The Alliance Gundam staggered back and barely shoved its sword back on the defensive as the Destiny commenced a ruthless series of sweeping sword blows. "You forget, Mr. Devil's Saber, I'm the one who can sense emotions," Shinn shot back, "including your fear!"

"I am afraid of nothing!" Sven roared.

"Well, now we both know that's a lie!" cackled Shinn, and the two Gundams slammed together again amid a cloud of afterimages.

—

Rattling under a succession of saber blows, the Infinite Justice threw itself backward in front of the relentless Raigo. Athrun tensed as the white and blue Gundam closed in, and he jammed his saber forward to deflect the Raigo's slice at the Justice's waist.

"Stay out of my memories!" screamed ND HE, and the Raigo surged forward with a wave of exhaust from its Arrowhead Striker. "You keep appearing in them! With that green bird, or..." The turmoil from inside the Raigo intensified and Athrun winced at the feeling. "This other memory...you're there, in a space suit, and there's fire everywhere...!"

Athrun ground his teeth. "Of course you have Kira's memories," he growled, and the Justice parried a savage saber blow. "Of course this couldn't be easy for me. Nothing ever is."

The Raigo stabbed forward with its saber; the Justice parried the blow, only for the Raigo's shield to throw aside the Justice's counterattack. "Quit acting like you know me!" ND shot back. "You think you know who I am but _nobody does!_ Nobody can tell me who I am! That's why I wear this mask!"

"Not even you, huh?" Athrun asked, and flung up his saber to deflect a swing from the Raigo. He backed away slowly, saber working furiously, as the Raigo pressed its attack. "Never taken off the mask?"

With a crash and a shower of sparks, the Raigo slammed its saber forward into the Justice's beam saber. "Nobody can tell me who I am!" ND snarled. "Nobody, because none of you know! None of you can see through my mask!"

Athrun scowled back. "Well then...!"

Abruptly, the Justice surged forward and slammed its knee hard into the Raigo's torso. The white and blue Gundam reeled—just long enough for Athrun to lunge into its path as it sailed backward, whip around, and slam the Gundam again in the back, even harder. A shattering noise split the air in the Justice's cockpit, and on the auxiliary screen Athrun watched as shards of black plastic and drops of blood drifted into view...

A moment later, the face of Kira Yamato, pale skin streaked with blood and its violet eyes wide, lifted up from the console. Athrun swallowed the rush of feelings at his old friend's face and focused his mind on the distortion in the presence—the reminder that this thing before him was not Kira...and even Kira himself was no longer Kira.

"My...face..." ND started, as he caught his own reflection in the fragments of his mask's single green eye.

"That's who you are," Athrun answered quietly. "A clone of Kira Yamato. The Strike Gundam's pilot during the Valentine War."

"K-Kira...Yamato..." ND stared down at the drops of blood on his hands, at the shards of his mask floating around him. "Who...who I am...?"

Athrun studied the man's face for a moment—the fury, the fear, the confusion, all of it flickering across his features. "So now you have a choice," he went on. "You know who you are. I know who you are. What are you going to do about it?"

The dull, violet eyes of Kira Yamato blazed with fury as he fixed them on Kira's old friend.

"You...you can't..."

Suddenly, the Raigo's eyes lit up and the Gundam charged back into a vicious swordfight with the Justice.

"_You can't tell me who I am!_"

—

With the sky filled with beam fire, Stella Loussier's eyes darted between her two enemies—one a hulking light blue evolution of the old Calamity, the other a nimble dark green and white version of the Aile Windam. The Artemis Gundam roared in close with a volley of beam fire; the Gaia ducked beneath it and snaked its way amid the Debris Belt.

In the Artemis's cockpit, Mudie smirked. "Don't think you can hide in there forever. Shams, flush her out!"

"With pleasure!" Shams answered, and the Vanguard leveled off its two "Schlag" cannons to open fire—

Instead, an instant later, the Gaia lunged out of hiding and squeezed off a beam rifle shot that sliced through the Vanguard's rifle, then darted back into hiding amid the wreckage.

"What the fuck—?" Shams exclaimed. "Damn you!" The Vanguard let loose a withering barrage from its cannons that sliced its way through the wreckage with a trail of fire and smoke. The shrapnel ripped across the black sky and the two Alliance Gundams backed away—only for the Gaia to emerge from the smoke with a blast of thruster exhaust and charge in close, beam saber blazing, to attack the Artemis.

"How—?" Mudie yelped, and backed away as the Gaia nearly claimed her beam rifle with a saber swipe and switched to her own saber. "Shams—!"

"Get away from her first!" Shams shouted; the Vanguard swept in from behind and raised the heavy Kaefer Zwei shield on its left arm, and a silver anchor launched out.

With a crash from the straining metal, the Gaia whipped around and hurled its rifle into the anchor's path to be seized. The punctured rifle exploded—and as the Artemis hacked the flames apart, it found the Gaia nowhere to be seen.

"What the hell is that fucker up to?" Shams snarled as he frantically scanned the wreckage.

"There's nothing worse than an unruly Extended..." Mudie ground her teeth as she caught sight of movement in the wreckage and took off after it.

—

Lily Thevalley yelped in surprise as the Gale Strike Gundam slammed her Vent Savior back with a ruthless series of sword blows against her shield. She threw the silver mobile suit back in time to avoid a scissoring pair of swings towards her waist—but a moment later, the sky filled with green bolts of beam fire that forced her even further back, and the white DRAGOONs of the Nix Providence darted around her.

The Gale Strike came down again with another series of hard blows, until Lily flung the Vent Savior to the side, darted away, and started scanning the skies for a sign of Trojan's DOM—

Up above, a yellow bolt of energy shot by, followed by the black Hail Buster Gundam materializing. Lily lunged up and armed the plasma cannons to retaliate—only for the Hail Buster to disappear again, replaced by the crimson Nebula Blitz and its wide-open claws—

A beam rifle blast forced the Nebula Blitz back, and with a blaze of beams and thruster exhaust, Trojan's DOM Trooper dropped into view, the Regen Duel hot on its heels with drawn beam rifle and railgun.

"The hell is with these guys?" Trojan shouted. The Regen Duel poured fire after the DOM and forced it back next to the Vent Savior, and both mobile suits pulled back behind their shields as the Nix Providence showered them with DRAGOON fire—

And then they were gone. Lily blinked in surprise and her eyes darted over the displays—and up ahead, the five mobile suits with the Gundams' faces were rushing away...towards the flickering afterimages and furious gunbarrel fire of the Eclipse and its foe in battle.

"Well, I think we've let Emily have enough fun on her own," Trojan said.

Lily grinned back and the Vent Savior transformed and roared off after the Alliance machines.

—

The GOUF's sword slammed down against its foe's shield and rained sparks down on both mobile suits. Rau shot a glance over his shoulder, and then quickly whipped around, sword at the ready, to smack aside the second Hyperion G's beam saber. The third lunged up between them and leveled off its beam cannon; the GOUF jetted upward, but the Hyperion G's blast still claimed the GOUF's right leg, blowing it off at the knee.

"Not good enough!" Rau cackled, and the GOUF let loose a hail of beam bolts from the guns on its forearms. The third Hyperion G staggered back behind its shield; the remaining two moved in, but Rau slammed down the thruster pedal and roared forward. The third Hyperion G brought its machinegun to bear, but too late—the GOUF sawed through it at the waist with its beam sword.

The GOUF wheeled around as the stricken Hyperion G snapped in two and exploded. The remaining two leveled off their beam cannons and fired again; Rau threw the GOUF back with a smirk and fired back with the beam guns—

...and instead of making contact, the beam bolts slammed uselessly against the shimmering lightwave barriers that erupted out of the fronts of the enemy mobile suits' beam cannons.

"Ah yes," Rau grunted, "you can do that too."

One of the Hyperion Gs ignited a beam saber and charged, and Rau tensed and steeled himself for another swordfight.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

As the missiles, railgun shells, and pulsing green beams flashed around her beleaguered warship and slammed into its hull, Meyrin Hawke racked her brain for a plan to get out of this. The obvious way was back into the Debris Belt, but the obvious way was certainly what those two Alliance ships would close off first.

The other way was back down to Earth...but that meant atmospheric reentry, which became an increasingly untenable option with each hit her vessel took.

She glanced up ahead at the closing _Lucifer_. "Isolde, fire!" The triple-barreled cannon obligingly let loose a salvo that slammed directly into the warship's starboard leg and central hangar, blasting three blackened craters into the ship's hull—but the vessel plowed out of the smoke and fired back with its Valiant railguns to slam the shells into the _Minerva_'s prow.

"What the—are they going to ram us?" Abbey exclaimed.

"Malik, descend!" Meyrin ordered, and the _Minerva_ swung down ponderously beneath the charging _Lucifer_. The legged warship abruptly veered off to the side— "Hard to port!" Meyrin shouted, and Malik yanked the ship to the side just as a wave of beam fire lanced out from the looming _Charlemagne_ up ahead.

"And then there's them," Meyrin muttered.

"_Archangel_-class launching missiles!"

"CIWS, intercept!" As the CIWS rattled to life and the _Lucifer_'s missiles vanished in plumes of fire and smoke, Meyrin leaned forward, an idea coming to mind. "Chen, anti-beam depth charges! Isolde, Neidhardt, prepare to fire on my mark!"

Abbey frowned. "Another plan?"

Meyrin fixed her eyes on the dissipating smoke from the destroyed missiles and the thickening cloud of anti-beam particles. The _Lucifer_ let loose a round of Gottfried blasts that fizzled out in the anti-beam cloud.

"Isolde, aim five degrees off the _Archangel_-class's port side and fire!" The _Minerva_'s Isolde cannon boomed and the shells lashed by the _Lucifer_'s hull; obligingly, the _Lucifer_ edged starboard, closer to the wreckage in the Debris Belt.

"Ooh, I get it," Roxy spoke up with a grin. "Slick. I like it."

"As long as it works," Meyrin grumbled, and fixed her eyes on the _Archangel_-class. "Malik, reverse thrust, full. Isolde, continue firing on the enemy's port side. Force them closer to the edge of the Belt." She frowned as the orders went out and the Isolde fired again.

_Danilov may not be dumb enough to fall for this, but let's hope you are..._

—

The gunbarrels darted across the inky sky and showered the Eclipse with pulsing beam fire. Emily's eyes darted back and forth between them—two of them ignited beam blades and charged in close. The Eclipse batted them aside with its beam sword; an instant later the Fenrir was there with an upraised saber, and it slammed the blade down onto the Eclipse's sword.

"This is a much better fight, I must say," Morgan chuckled as the sparks crackled around the two mobile suits. "Much fairer."

The Eclipse flung the Fenrir back with a forceful swing of its sword and then rocketed upward to dodge a wave of gunbarrel fire. The Fenrir lunged up after the black Gundam; a pair of beam cannons flipped up from its back and opened fire, and the Eclipse backed away behind his beam shield.

"But you don't seem to be taking me seriously!" Morgan continued, and the Fenrir intensified its fire. "I wonder why?" The Fenrir snaked its way through its own gunbarrel fire. "Is there someone better for you to fight?"

Emily glanced to the right, long enough to find those approaching human presences—and then she flung the Eclipse to the side, letting Morgan's finishing saber stab pass through a cloud of afterimages. The Eclipse backpedaled as a wave of beam fire filled the space around it—

An instant later, the Hail Buster Gundam flickered into sight and pounded the Eclipse's beam shield with a hyper impulse blast.

"You again," Emily grunted; the Regen Duel was there next to pummel the Eclipse with a blast from its bazooka. The Nix Providence's white DRAGOONs filled the sky with more green beams; Emily rocketed up over the blasts, but waiting there and dropping in from above was the crimson Nebula Blitz, the _Maga-no-Ikutachi_ claws spread wide open.

"_Finally!_" roared Travis Alterman as the Nebula Blitz came crashing down. Emily jetted backward to avoid its blow—but the Nebula Blitz ignited its beam saber and promptly swatted it against the Eclipse's beam sword, and then fired its thrusters to drive the black Gundam back. "All talk and no action makes me a very bored man!"

Emily shot a glance over her shoulder and dove to the side as the Gale Strike lunged in from behind with a scissoring pair of sword blows. The blue and the red mobile suits darted apart again, just as the Nix Providence came down with a sweeping slash from the saber mounted on the composite armed shield on its right arm. And as Emily ducked away from that, the Hail Buster appeared from nowhere to shower her with missiles.

At the edge of the battlefield, Morgan sniffed contemptuously as he recalled his gunbarrels. "Nice of you to let me know ahead of time."

"This one is our target, Captain Chevalier," warned Lieutenant Maynard's voice through the comm. "Two mobile suits are inbound. We will handle the Angel."

"Will you now."

As if to emphasize her point, the Regen Duel brought a beam saber crashing down onto the Eclipse's beam sword.

"It's our specialty," said Kelly.

Morgan snorted in disgust and turned his Fenrir towards the approaching units.

—

Afterimages and sparks filled the starry sky as the Destiny and Crusader clashed, anti-ship swords straining under each other's blows. Shinn licked his lips as he felt the enemy's fear begin to mount.

"Surely you're not afraid of _me,_" he chuckled, "what with all the times you've survived fighting me."

The Crusader slammed its sword down hard onto the Destiny's blade and sent the ZAFT Gundam staggering back. "You would do well to stop the guesswork, Asuka," Sven snapped, and the Crusader leveled off its long-range cannon to open fire and force the Destiny to somersault to the side. He fired again and put the Destiny back on the defensive—but his third shot passed through only an afterimage and he threw the Schwert Gewehr up to deflect the Destiny's devastating overhead blow. "You have much to worry about as it is."

Shinn smirked back. "Haven't you been paying attention to the stories about me? Not _all_ of them are bullshit, y'know." The Crusader surged forward; the Destiny somersaulted over its head, but the Alliance Gundam whipped around to block the sword stroke Shinn aimed at its back. "Like the one about how I'm a Newtype! That one's not bullshit at all!"

Sven pounded the Destiny's sword with a snarl. "_Don't_ talk to me about _Newtypes_, you degenerate!"

"Oh, I think I will!" Shinn shot back, and parried the Crusader's next blow. He jammed the Destiny's sword downward, locking the Crusader's blade in place, and pushed the Destiny's shoulder into the Crusader's chest to leave the two mobile suits stuck together. "For example, fun fact about Newtypes, we can sense the emotions of other people. Happiness, sadness, anger, confusion...and fear." He grinned at Sven's increasingly furious face. "And wouldn't you know, I can feel nothing but fear from you."

"_Enough!_" Sven screamed; with a blast, the Crusader rushed forward and slammed the Destiny into a piece of wreckage on the edge of the Debris Belt. "Don't presume to think you know anything about me, Asuka!" The Crusader reared back, sword held high. "You will know nothing but _death!_"

Shinn clenched his fists around the Destiny's controls and jammed his Gundam forward to ram the Crusader in the chest as it brought down its sword. Sven snarled a curse and rocketed over the Destiny's winnowing horizontal slice, and poured fire from his long-range cannon after the Destiny.

"Fair is fair, Devil's Saber," Shinn said with a smirk. "There's more than one way to win a duel."

Sven's eyes flashed with fury, the Crusader charged forward to smack the Destiny back with a sword stroke, and roared after the reeling Gundam.

—

"_Nobody can tell me who I am!_" shrieked ND HE as the Raigo's saber slammed against the Infinite Justice's beam shield. Athrun grunted as the Raigo furiously rained saber strokes against the Justice's shield and drove the red Gundam back with sheer force. "_Nobody! Not even you!_"

Athrun ground his teeth as he saw his chance and jetted backward to dodge the Raigo's next strike—but as he lunged forward with the Justice's left-hand leg blade lit up, the Raigo swung its own saber back up to sever the Justice's leg at the knee, and then smashed its shield into the Justice's torso. Athrun cried out in pain as he was slammed back into his seat—the Raigo closed in with its saber upraised—

A memory flashed through Athrun's mind, followed by another, and another. He saw himself not in the cockpit of his long-suffering Infinite Justice—but long ago, in the Marshall Islands, where the man with this face had come at him like this once before. He let out his breath and summoned up that feeling—the will to destroy, the memory of what Kira Yamato had done. And it had not just been Nicol. Cagalli. Lacus. Everything.

And this time, as one strand of his mind drifted back to that woman with the red hair on the _Minerva_, there was something else to motivate him.

The seed burst and Athrun jammed his beam shield forward to spoil the Raigo's saber blow—and with an ear-splitting shriek of shredding metal, he swept his saber upward and severed the Raigo's left arm at the shoulder, taking its own shield with it. The Raigo struggled forward, sparks flying from its fresh wound; Athrun flung the Raigo aside and pointed his saber combatively at it.

"You're wrong," he hissed. "I damn well _can_ tell you who you are. You're a clone of a man who's gone mad. I'm going to kill that man," he fixed his dull eyes on the Raigo, "and I'm going to kill you too."

ND HE snarled in rage, the Raigo charged, and the swordfight resumed.

—

The DOM's sensors screamed in warning and Trojan Noiret responded by instinct. He hurled the DOM out of formation with the Vent Savior, and the silver Gundam did likewise, as a wave of beam fire lanced through their position—and up ahead, a single mobile suit came storming into battle, beam rifle in hand, gunbarrels charging around it.

Trojan felt his heart sink as he caught sight of the emblem on the mobile suit's chest.

"Just what I wanted to see," he sighed, "the Moonlight Mad Dog." He glanced over at the Vent Savior. "Lily, break off!"

The two mobile suits darted apart again as the Moonlight Mad Dog brought his gunbarrels to bear. Trojan backpedaled behind his beam shield and raised the DOM's Gigalauncher—only for the Fenrir to drive him back with another wave of beam fire. Up above, the Vent Savior leveled off its plasma cannons; instead, the Fenrir's gunbarrels swarmed to drive the silver Gundam back.

Trojan ground his teeth, ignited the two sabers at the end of his custom beam rifle, and plunged forward with a shout. The beams came down onto the Fenrir's beam shield—and Trojan found himself face to face with Morgan Chevalier.

"Yeesh, the Resistance's pilots just get younger and younger," he sighed, and the Fenrir flung its bulky green opponent back. "Really such a shame."

"What the hell is this about?" sputtered Trojan; the Fenrir whipped around to swat the Vent Savior back with its beam shield and then showered both its foes with gunbarrel fire.

"I'll give you credit, kid, you're doing okay," Morgan went on with a smirk, "but I'm afraid little miss Angel over there still has you beat."

The gunbarrels swarmed in again—and Trojan seized his chance to plunge the DOM Trooper through the blasts and level off his Gigalauncher again. The Fenrir dodged his blasts with expert precision, and as the gunbarrels came streaking in again, Trojan bit back a curse, reared back, and fired a salvo of combat flares into the Fenrir's face.

And with that, Trojan lunged over the blinding lights surrounding the Fenrir and seized the Vent Savior by the arm. "Come on!" he shouted. "This guy's out of our league!"

"What—but—there's two of us!" Lily sputtered.

"We have more important things to do," Trojan answered. "Let's go. We're finding Emily."

Left behind, Morgan chuckled as the flares died away.

"Very clever, kid, but you forgot to make the getaway as clean as the diversion."

The Fenrir's eyes flashed and the mobile suit took off after its retreating foes.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

_Clever, Captain Hawke, but too clever by half,_ mused Ivan Danilov as the _Charlemagne_'s railguns spat shells through the haze of anti-beam particles. The _Minerva_ banked to starboard and let the shells sear by overhead. Danilov glanced over at the Debris Belt. Those missiles they had ejected weren't duds at all; they were live, waiting to be fired into the _Lucifer_. Up ahead, the _Lucifer_ itself forged ahead through the anti-beam particles, and then jerked to starboard—closer to the debris—as the _Minerva_'s triple-barreled cannon answered with a thundering blast.

Danilov keyed the transmit button on his chair's armrest. "Joaquin, what are you doing? You know they laid missiles in the debris already, to the _Lucifer_'s starboard side."

"Of course they did," snorted Joaquin. "We'll move in close, make their missiles too dangerous to use, and keep the CIWS primed. A simple trick like that isn't going to stop the _Lucifer_." He cast a contemptuous glance towards the younger captain. "You are being too cautious, Danilov. They can't pull this trick on us if we watched them set it up."

The screen went dark and Danilov pondered the point. Of course they had seen the _Minerva_ eject its missiles into the Belt. Captain Hawke must have known that. She knew they had arrived and was turning to fight when she'd done it.

Unless those missiles weren't going to be fired at all...

And then, as though the gods had taken their cue, a blinding chain of explosions ripped through the Debris Belt. Danilov grunted as his ship shook around him—and, as he glanced up, he looked on in disbelief as a wave of shrapnel from the Debris Belt came rushing at his ship.

"Helm, ascend, 45 degrees, flank speed!" he barked, and the _Charlemagne_'s engines shuddered to life as the wreckage began to hit. He looked down at the _Lucifer_ and cringed as he saw a giant chuck of wreckage smash off its portside wing, and the dark-hulled battleship rocked and spewed smoke as the rubble rained down onto it.

"You fool, Joaquin," Danilov hissed. "Valiants, intensify fire on the _Minerva!_ Don't let them get away!"

—

The wave of debris rushed through the battlefield and Stella seized her opportunity to dart into the moving wreckage. Ahead of her, the Vanguard and Artemis floundered as they struggled to dodge the flying debris—and Stella paused long enough to fire a volley of potshots with the Gaia's beam cannons, then dart back into the wreckage.

"Did they do it...?" she murmured, glancing around the debris—and then a beam shot by her field of vision, and an instant later the Artemis was there with its rifle in its left hand and a blazing beam saber in its right.

"Don't take me for a fool!" shouted Mudie Holcroft as the Artemis blasted into battle. Stella backed away and dodged the Artemis's beam rifle blasts—and then, with an ear-piercing shriek of twisting metal, the Gaia lunged forward and brought down its saber, through the Artemis's raised beam rifle. Mudie hissed a curse and swung up her own saber, only to see the blow spoiled by the Gaia's blade, and she flung the ruined beam rifle away. "It's not like there's anywhere else for you to go..."

The Gaia's eyes flashed and it pushed forward, driving the Artemis back. Mudie slammed on the brakes and stormed forward with a final beam saber stab—

Instead, the Gaia backflipped over the blow, just in time for a sizable piece of wreckage to crash head-on into the Artemis and send it hurtling away.

Stella let out her breath as the wreckage carried her foe away and scanned the battlefield for the _Minerva_. Getting rid of them was one thing; getting back home would be another.

—

Swords clashing and afterimages flying, the Destiny and Crusader did battle amid the flying wreckage of the Debris Belt. Shinn darted around the charred hulk of an old warship and came down with a shout onto the Crusader; the sparks flew and their two swords strained.

"Last time I had you on the ropes," Sven snarled.

"Yeah, well, this time it occurred to me to fuck with your head," Shinn shot back. The two Gundams jetted apart, dodged another chunk of wreckage, and then slammed together again. "But I'll give you credit, that's a pretty nice machine you've got." He smirked. "Bummer 'bout the pilot."

The Crusader flung the Destiny back. "Enough of this," Sven growled. "Our rivalry has lasted long enough, Traitor Asuka. Coordinator or not, Newtype or not, I will destroy you."

Shinn arched an eyebrow as he briefly considered his enemy's flickering presence and decided to take a shot in the dark. "You might have had more of a chance," he said with a shrug, "if you weren't just a Natural."

At that, the fear turned white hot with anger and the Crusader roared forward. "_No one_ will turn me into an Extended!" Sven cried, and the Crusader rained punishing sword blows onto the Destiny's blade. "I will _never_ surrender my control! I will _never_ surrender my humanity! Nobody can take that away from me—_least of all you!_"

Shinn yanked the controls back and threw the Destiny into a dive, just as the Crusader charged forward with a sweeping horizontal sword slash. The Alliance Gundam followed with an army of afterimages at its side; the Destiny stopped short, whipped around, and the two swords slammed together again.

"Struck a nerve, huh?" Shinn asked. He glanced over the Crusader's shoulder and saw his opening in the approaching old hulk of a ruined _Drake_-class destroyer, its hull torn open to expose a cache of missiles. _Let's hope those aren't duds..._

"Don't think I'll fall for that, Asuka," hissed Sven. "I will defeat you without enhancements."

"Will you now," Shinn responded—

With a resounding crash, Shinn suddenly rammed the Destiny's knee into the Crusader's torso. The Alliance mobile suit darted back to avoid the Destiny's finishing slash—only for Shinn to level off the long-range cannon, squeeze off a shot, and back away as it sizzled past the Crusader and sliced through the approaching shipwreck.

A thundering explosion engulfed the Crusader in flames, and Shinn seized his chance to rocket away, while Sven sat inside the quaking Crusader and seethed.

—

The Infinite Justice rocked as the Raigo's beam saber claimed its left arm at the elbow, and Athrun brought his saber back up again, only for the Raigo to jam its blade into the way and stop the attack cold. Athrun ground his teeth as he stared into that familiar face, the one that had haunted him at the Marshall Islands. But that was not the one who had killed Nicol and Cagalli and Lacus.

"You have no right to tell me who I am," ND HE fumed. "I wear this mask so that _nobody_ knows!"

"Well, _I_ know," Athrun shot back. "You're not Kira Yamato. You're just a clone."

The Raigo charged forward. "_Stop saying that!_" The two mobile suits came together with another crash and resumed their swordfight. The Raigo ducked beneath a sweeping saber blow and then rushed back up and tore a smoldering gash into the Justice's torso. Athrun backed away and brought his own saber to bear, claiming the Raigo's right leg at the knee; the Raigo rocketed forward anyway and shoved the Justice back, and then lopped off the corner of its right-hand shoulder armor. It drew back its saber for a final stab.

"You're definitely not Kira," Athrun grunted, as his loyal Justice threw sparks and smoke. "And even if you were, I couldn't save you." The Justice groaned in protest as the Raigo repeatedly slammed its saber down onto the Justice's blade. "You're not the man who was my friend."

"_I'll kill you!_" ND shrieked, and the Raigo closed in for a final slash—

Athrun saw it before it happened, the white bolt striking the air before him. He jammed the controls down; the Justice ducked under the Raigo's attack, then swung back up and drove its saber through the Raigo's cockpit. ND HE vanished in a blaze, and the Raigo erupted into a thundering explosion.

Inside the Justice, dimming and sparking, Athrun sat back painfully and closed his eyes. The memories of Kira danced before his eyes—at Copernicus, with Torii; at Heliopolis, on the Strike; in space, handing over Lacus; at Orb, fighting the Alliance together.

But those were not his only memories. There was Nicol, Cagalli, Lacus, the entire world gone mad and Kira with his hands on the strings. And if that had to be the case...

He glanced up at the sound of his sensors beeping, and found Trojan's DOM Trooper dropping in from above.

"Jesus Christ, what happened to _you?_" Trojan asked, as the DOM took hold of the Justice's ruined body. "Are you alright in there, Athrun?"

Athrun spared the Raigo's wreckage one more glance. "I'm alright. Let's get back to the ship."

—

Rau Le Creuset bit back a curse as one of the Hyperion G's beams plowed through the GOUF Ignited's shield and blew apart its entire left arm. The stricken mobile suit staggered back under the blow, and only Rau's Newtype senses warned him to fling the mobile suit to the side and avoid another cannon blast. One of the Hyperion Gs up ahead leveled off its machinegun—

Instead, one of the debris pieces kicked up by the _Minerva_'s missiles slammed into it from behind and sent it tumbling away. Rau turned towards the survivor as it flailed amid the wreckage, and charged forward with his beam guns blazing. The Hyperion G's armor chipped away, its beam submachinegun went spiraling into the distance, and it pulled back behind its shining lightwave barrier.

"That barrier is not impenetrable," Rau grumbled, "but how—?"

The Hyperion G lurched forward, a beam saber in hand, and brought it down with a crash against the GOUF's beam sword. Rau grimaced and slammed the GOUF's knee into his opponent's chest—the Hyperion G flipped up its machinegun and opened fire—Rau plunged through the blasts even as the bullets shredded his mobile suit's remaining armor—

The human life in the cockpit vanished as Rau smashed his sword through the Hyperion G's cockpit hatch and out its back. With a satisfied grunt, he yanked his sword free, but too late—the Hyperion G exploded, the GOUF's right arm and backpack vanished in the blast, and the mobile suit pitched backwards—and downwards.

Rau glanced over his shoulder and cringed as he reached for the comm.

_Into the gravity well we go..._

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Archangel**_**-class battleship **_**Lucifer**_

"Sir, the reactor's been breached!" one of the deckhands exclaimed on the _Lucifer_'s bridge. "It could go critical at any moment!"

Ortega rubbed his aching, bloody head. All systems disabled, engines knocked out, armor breaches all over, and now the ship was listing to port—and downward, into the Earth's atmosphere. There was no way his ship could survive atmospheric reentry in this condition, not with the ablative heat gel dispensers knocked out. He looked up, out the bridge windows, at the shattered hull of his command.

"Muster all personnel to the escape launches," he ordered. "Give the order to abandon ship."

The helmsman blanched. "In all this, sir?" he exclaimed with a wave of his hand at the wreckage. "The launches—"

"It's better than sitting here to die," Ortega snapped. "Get a move on! Colonel Joaquin—"

He turned, and found only an empty chair.

"Captain, one of the launches is taking off!" someone shouted.

Ortega stared in disbelief as a steel gray space launch drifted out of the smashed portside hangar and took off, and felt the fury bubbling up within him.

_You son of a bitch..._

A moment later, a sheet of fire was the last thing Ortega saw as the _Lucifer_ exploded.

—

At the launch's controls, Colonel Joaquin sat back with a heavy sigh and pointed his vehicle towards the _Charlemagne_. The _Lucifer_ was a regrettable loss, but it could be replaced, as long as he lived to fight another day. He glanced up in surprise as he caught sight of the Fenrir falling into formation next to his vehicle.

"_Lucifer_ launch," Morgan Chevalier started, and then stopped in surprise as he noticed that Joaquin appeared to be alone. "Well. Strange that you're the only person on that launch, colonel."

Joaquin narrowed his eyes. "Escort me to the _Charlemagne_, Captain Chevalier. That's an order."

"You know the _Lucifer_ went down," Morgan continued. "Odd that you're the only man to survive this little disaster."

"Cut the chatter, Chevalier, or I'll hold you for insubordination—"

Joaquin trailed off and froze in fear as he saw one of the Fenrir's gunbarrels dart in front of him, beam cannons extended.

"You won't be doing anything, colonel," Morgan Chevalier intoned. "Every man who is confronted with evil is faced with a choice. Consider this mine."

The gunbarrel fired, Joaquin screamed, and all went dark.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

This was the hard part.

Meyrin Hawke sat back on the bridge as her ship lumbered into the atmosphere, a thick cloud of anti-beam particles trailing her every move. The _Charlemagne_ was far up above and behind, floundering amid the wreckage and trying to squeeze off railgun shells towards the retreating _Minerva_—but the wreckage was doing its part to shield the escaping warship. Hopefully that would last long enough to get the _Minerva_ down through the atmosphere.

"Mobile suits," Meyrin spoke up. "Which ones have we recovered?"

"Destiny and Gaia, without damage," Roxy read off. "Vent Savior and DOM, without damage. Justice, with, uh, a lot of damage. And..." She trailed off. "Rau's GOUF and the Eclipse are still out there."

"Why isn't Rau back yet?" Abbey demanded. "What the hell is he doing?"

"Send Emily to pick him up, and tell her to get back immediately," Meyrin instructed. "All hands, prepare for atmospheric reentry. Double-time, before the _Charlemagne_ can retaliate."

She glanced back at the main screen and pushed down the nervousness—and the doubt, as Shinn's words quietly bubbled up in the back of her mind. Emily would be alright on her own; the Eclipse's beam shields could easily handle atmospheric reentry. But Rau and the GOUF...

Meyrin shook her head and fixed her attention forward. This was always the hard part.

—

Most satisfying, perhaps, was the piece of wreckage that slammed sidelong into the Nix Providence and sent it sailing out of the fight, its DRAGOONs going with it. Emily let her instincts take over as she guided the Eclipse through the flying debris and enemy fire.

"Emily, we're starting reentry procedures!" Roxy's voice cut in. "Find Rau and both of you get back here!"

"Rau?" Emily echoed, and she took the opportunity to scan the battlefield—and pinpointed the telltale pressure of Rau Le Creuset. "Wait, what's going on—?"

Rau's masked face appeared on the auxiliary monitor. "Ah, Emily. I could use a hand here."

"Wait, where—?" She fell silent long enough to dodge another attack from one of the Alliance mobile suits, and then another wave of wreckage that carried one of them away. "Is that—oh no, what happened?"

"Enemy fire is what happened," Rau answered, his image on the screen flickering. "My maneuvering system is disabled. The GOUF cannot survive reentry on its own—"

Emily felt her blood run hot as she evaded another wave of attacks and fixed Rau's location in her mind. "I'll be there, hold on!"

With a blinding flash of light and a wave of afterimages, the Eclipse's Voiture Lumiere system came to life and the black Gundam rocketed its way through the wreckage, leaving the Alliance mobile suits far behind. Emily's eyes darted back and forth as she scanned among the wreckage—the edges of which were starting to glow red.

"There!" she cried—and then the Eclipse rattled as Emily lunged down, seized the GOUF with its right hand, and deployed the beam shield with its left. "Okay, let's go—!"

"Too late," Rau interrupted. "Watch the altitude. We will have to reenter on our own."

Emily felt the panic rise up in her throat. She shoved it back down and reached back into her memory, groping after the reentry procedures. Activate the beam shield, redirect power to the cooling systems, close down the beam wings and Voiture Lumiere...

"I have done this before," Rau added. "Do as I say and we will survive."

Emily looked up at him, through the imposing mask, and felt a preternatural calm radiating from him. She closed her mouth and nodded—and Rau answered with a smile.

"_Minerva_," Emily said into the comm, "we're reentering separately. We'll, uh, meet you down below."

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The ocean breeze lilted over the deck and swirled around the man on the conning tower. These nights on the equatorial Atlantic Ocean were never as chilly as Antarctica. Nothing was.

Nathaniel Hatias stood on the conning tower of his command and wrapped his blue service coat over his white ZAFT uniform. The bearded man pushed back his white peaked cap and looked up to the sky—at the red streak amid the stars.

The ZAFT Black Shirt with a bushy black beard came to a stop by his side. "So that's the _Minerva_, huh?"

Nathaniel nodded. "On atmospheric reentry. Projections put them in our neck of the woods." He glanced over at the man. "Is everything ready, Camwell?"

Camwell, executive officer of the ship, nodded. "Ladd has his team ready to go at a moment's notice. And we've got the names of several ZAFT remnant cells on call too, if we want reinforcements." He looked up towards the red streak in the sky and smirked. "Fresh out of the shipyard at Lagash and we're up against the _Minerva_. Who'd have thought?"

Frowning, Nathaniel fixed his gaze on the approaching warship and pondered.

—

**Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

"And here I was thinking we'd have a nice evening to ourselves."

Amid the smoke curling up from a campfire and the quiet noises of the jungle at night, a man and a woman stared up towards the sky, at the fuzzy smudge of red in the sky. A larger one had passed by overhead minutes ago—but this one was new.

"Strays from the Debris Belt?" asked the woman.

"Probably not. João called it in on the telescope. It's that new Resistance mobile suit that's been running around on the _Minerva_."

The woman whistled in surprise. "Well, now you can give her hell for stealing your schtick."

The man chuckled knowingly and looked back up at the sky. "Oh, I dunno, I don't think I've got a monopoly on personifications of death. But as long as she's coming here, I do look forward to seeing what she can do." He sighed. "Well, have Fernando go set up some IR flares to guide her in, and make sure they're on hand to hide the Gundam when it lands. It's gonna be loud and it's gonna leave a big fucking hole."

The woman smirked over at her companion. "Rolling out the red carpet, I see."

The man broke into a grin. "Call it a professional courtesy," he said, "from Ed the Ripper."

—

To be continued...


	21. Phase 21: Gravity

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 21 - Gravity

—

**May 6th, CE 77 - Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

The Gundam Eclipse's frame rattled louder than Emily ever thought possible or safe as it soared through the atmosphere, clutching Rau Le Creuset's ruined GOUF under its right arm and shaking smoke off the beam shield on its left hand. Down below stretched the dark expanse of South America—a jungle at night, with few lights anywhere to guide the two mobile suits to the ground. Emily steeled herself and hoped she wasn't plunging into a city or something.

"IR flares," Rau spoke up suddenly. Emily glanced up at the display, finding a string of dots blazing in the infrared sensor's otherwise dark picture. "Hmm. A hundred and fifty kilometers west of Manaus."

"What does that mean?" Emily asked.

"The Alliance has a base in Manaus. They can undoubtedly track us from up here, and if they don't know we're here now, they will when we impact."

Emily gulped. "Impact?"

"That is the best way to describe what we're about to do." Rau paused for a moment. "Fire the forward thrusters again, continuous burst. Let's see if we can drop the speed a bit more."

As she complied and the Eclipse's speedometer slowly ticked down by a few kilometers, she glanced back up nervously at the IR sensor. "Who could have put those flares there?"

Rau stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment. "If the Alliance wanted to destroy us, they would have done so already. Those may be flares from Resistance forces." He consulted his map for a moment. "Ah, this is Ed the Ripper's territory. How fortuitous."

"Ed the Ripper?"

"You'll see. We're on the final approach. Bring us in as low as possible and drop the speed as much as you can before you touch down."

Emily braced herself. "I'll use the Voiture Lumiere, then. Hold on."

The Eclipse opened up its binders and a sapphire flash of light filled the sky as the Voiture Lumiere activated. Emily grunted in pain as the G-forces hit her, but the flight suit did its job and the Eclipse began to grind to a halt.

"Just get us over the river," Rau instructed. "We'll still be within a few dozen kilometers of the nearest inhabited locality..."

As she scanned up ahead, the black winding form of the Amazon River opened beneath her—and on the banks, amid the trees, a flash of light from the first of the IR flares. She slammed on the brakes, fired the forward thrusters, and cringed.

The crash, she suspected, was probably audible for miles around.

Tearing up the vegetation and soil as it went, the Eclipse slammed its feet down into the earth and ground a scar into the face of the jungle. The IR flares flashed by, the trees parted up ahead, the black depths of a lake stretched open in front of them—

"Stop us, now!" Rau barked; Emily ground her teeth as she seized the Eclipse's controls, twisted the Gundam around in the dirt, and fired the thrusters with the Voiture Lumiere system's assistance, throwing herself forward with a yelp of pain—

And, with a last roar of broken trees and topsoil, the Eclipse shuddered to a halt on the shores of Lago Anori, a few kilometers from the dim lights of a small city on the lake's northern shore. The black Gundam wearily pitched forward and supported itself with its free left hand on the ground, smoke still rising from its body, with a path of destruction carved through the jungle behind it.

"Well," Rau said quietly, "you certainly know how to make an entrance."

"I hope nobody minds that I just destroyed the rainforest," Emily muttered.

"It'll grow back. Lights, eleven o'clock."

Emily looked down nervously at the camera as the headlights of a jeep poked out of the darkness. The jeep itself slithered out of the jungle and came to a halt by the smoking trench the Eclipse had torn into the ground during its landing—and a dark-skinned man in a leather bomber jacket hopped out of the jeep, leaving his female companion and three well-armed fighters behind.

"See? Fortuitous," said Rau. "Meet Edward Harrelson, former pilot of the United States of South America." The GOUF's hatch popped open and Rau stepped out in his long black trench coat, a smirk on his face and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. "Ed the Ripper! A fine welcome for us indeed!"

At the Gundam's feet, Edward Harrelson looked up in disbelief. "Rau Le Creuset, huh? How the hell did _you_ wind up here?"

Rau gestured to the black Gundam as he lowered himself on the ruined GOUF's zip line. "I had a ride. Our apologies, by the way, for the mess."

Ed waved him off with a sigh. "Just helping some friends in need. So who's in the Gundam?"

The Eclipse's hatch swung open with a burst of steam and the zip line dropped down, with Emily clinging to it. Her feet hit the ground and she turned around, to come face to face with Ed the Ripper.

"Mr. Harrelson, meet Emily von Oldendorf," Rau said with a grin, "the Angel of Death."

For a moment, Emily squirmed under the taller man's intimidating gaze—and then he broke into a grin. "Not looking too deathly, I must say," he said, and extended his hand for a handshake hesitantly returned by Emily.

"I just crashed into a forest," Emily mumbled defensively.

"Oh, could've been worse," a woman's voice spoke up, and she stepped into view from behind Ed. "You could've landed in Manaus. Jane Houston, by the way. Good to meet you." They shook hands, and Emily glanced over questioningly at Rau.

"I'm sure we can all enjoy the ace pilot reunion later," the masked man spoke up, "but no doubt Manaus is scrambling forces to come inspect the crash site." He gestured over his shoulder, across the river. "Surely they heard the impact."

"True," Ed agreed. "The GOUF still any good?" Rau shook his head. "Then dump it in the lake. Emily, you'll have to hide the Gundam in the forest. Follow us; it'll be a few kilometers yet."

Ed and Jane turned back towards their jeep, and Emily returned to the Gundam with a feeling of dread gnawing at her from within.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

This was the part Meyrin hated.

"All hands, brace for impact! Water landing!" she shouted, and steeled herself in the captain's chair as the inky depths of the Atlantic Ocean at night sprawled before her. At least Stella would get to see the sea again—because the sea was about to be all over the place.

The _Minerva_ landed amid a wall of water thrown into the air and drove along the ocean's surface, even as it slowed with each meter. The ship rattled as it came to a stop in the water; Meyrin kept her eye fixed on the speedometer as the vessel's speed inexorably clawed its way down to zero.

And then, with a shudder and a groan from the straining warship, it all came to a stop, and the entire bridge crew let out its collective breath.

"Abbey, start assessing damage to the ship," Meyrin ordered. "Burt, keep an eye on the sensors. There's no way we were missed on the way in." She pulled off her cap and ran a hand tiredly through her hair. They needed some more shore leave. "And for that matter, where the heck are we?"

Burt checked his console for a moment. "Um...about a thousand kilometers north of Ascension Island."

"And Emily's last trajectory?"

"Err, hang on...in Brazil...within two hundred kilometers of Manaus."

"Oh, shit," Roxy added.

"She and Rau can take care of themselves for the time being," Meyrin spoke up, hoping to crush the fear in the pit of her own stomach before it got any stronger. "First things first. Get the damage assessed and dealt with, and I'll plot us a course and figure out how to get our pilots back."

The bridge set to work, and Roxy turned her chair towards Meyrin. "Well, there is _one_ bit of good news."

Meyrin arched an eyebrow. "What?"

"Our two sleeping beauties have finally woken up."

—

"_WHAT THE HELL?_"

The scream echoed down the corridors of the _Minerva_, out of a gash torn in the wall of one corridor by an explosion, out into the chilly night air. Peering over the electrical cables underneath one pried-up floorboard, Vino Dupre glanced down the hallway—where Sting Oakley was shambling through the door, eyes wide, pointing hysterically at the damage.

"Oh, hey, you're awake," Vino said with a shrug. "Yeah, you missed some stuff."

Sting looked over slowly. "V-Vino, when I went to sleep, there was no gravity," he stammered, "and that wall was, you know, _there_."

"Yeah, well, we've been busy," Vino answered as he delved back into the cables. "Long story short, you've been out for, like, a week, and we're back on Earth now. Gonna have to ask someone else for the details, though, I've got power conduits to check."

Sting slowly looked back at the hole in the wall, and then back at Vino. "A _week?_"

"Totally. Like, nine days or something."

The implications slowly trickled through Sting's tranquilizer-addled brain and he steadied himself against the wall by the door. "Jesus Christ, a week..."

"Oh yeah. You missed all the fun on the Moon." Vino paused and his smirk disappeared. "That's not such a bad thing."

"Why?"

"Someone else can explain."

Sting paused as another implication hit him. "Wait a minute," he said, "you mean something blew up that wall right there and punched a hole in it, and then we reentered the atmosphere, and I was sleeping like _twenty feet from it?_"

Vino shrugged. "Well, you're okay, so what are you bitching about?"

"_You didn't move us?_"

"We put sealant on the breach and it burned off during reentry. The infirmary was pressurized. It was fine. Quit having a fit."

Sting opened his mouth to retort, but the sleep had yet to completely release him—and either way, another scream went echoing down the hallways from the infirmary doorway. Sting and Vino turned around, and the latter smacked his forehead.

"Oh, come on," Vino groaned.

In the doorway, finger pointed in shock at the gaping hole in the wall, stood Auel Neider.

"_HOW THE FUCK DID THAT GET THERE?_"

Vino shook his head and dove into the cables beneath the floor.

—

The hangar rang with noise as the crane worked over the battle-weary green DOM Trooper, with Trojan Noiret at the controls and meticulously reloading the mobile suit's Gigalauncher. He glanced over his shoulder, where Lily was slumped against the railing, looking put out.

"For the last time," he said, "we're not leaving to go find Emily."

"Why not?" Lily shot back petulantly.

"Because," Shinn Asuka's voice interrupted as he stepped onto the gantry, "that would leave just Stella and I to defend the ship." He glanced down at Lily. "And that's kind of unfair." Shinn returned his attention to Trojan. "How's that thing coming?"

"Almost reloaded." Trojan shifted uncomfortably. "But, um, when _are_ we going to..."

"As soon as humanly possible," Shinn answered. "For lots of reasons."

"Good," huffed Lily, and she stuck her tongue out at Trojan for emphasis.

"But she's with Rau Le Creuset," protested Trojan. "They should be safe. That's not really bad company."

Shinn's expression darkened. "Oh no," he said, and headed towards the Destiny, "it definitely is."

—

Viveka von Oldendorf panicking was a terrifying sight to see, decided Athrun Zala. Not in the least because that titanium prosthetic of hers could break bones, and Athrun rather liked his bones.

And that was ironic, really, because if anyone had any reason to panic, it was Athrun. Not after watching Emily sail into the atmosphere with Rail Le Creuset, left alone with a murderous madman. He wouldn't hurt Emily, of course—but Rau Le Creuset was far more dangerous for it.

He put on a mask of calm and grabbed Viveka by the shoulder. "Calm down," he ordered. "You know Meyrin isn't going to just leave her."

Viveka glared back. "That doesn't mean I don't get to worry when my baby sister runs off to South America with a guy in a creepy mask," she shot back.

"If it's any comfort, they were heading for Ed the Ripper's stomping grounds. They'll look after her."

At that, Viveka seemed to calm down a little, and Athrun decided to take what he could get. "As long as she'll be okay," she sighed.

Athrun frowned and hoped the same.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, orbit of Earth**

The furious feeling of failure bubbled through Sven Cal Bayan's veins as he stepped out of the locker room, back in his black Phantom Pain uniform. There were repairs to oversee, reports to file, but for now he would have to simply stew in helpless rage at his latest failure—his twofold failure.

The Crusader Gundam was still the superior machine, but Sven had not been prepared for the mind games the pilot had used to level the playing field—nor had he expected Shinn Asuka's verbal barbs to be so precise. That would have to change. The first time could not have been simply surprise and momentum that had brought him victory. Shinn Asuka could not be that good.

Sven looked slowly over his shoulder as the source of all this aggravation—the real source—came drifting around the corner, and reminded him of his _other_ failure.

"Last time you fought the Destiny," Yukiko said sternly, "you nearly destroyed it. What happened this time?"

Sven straightened up. "I do not know."

Yukiko frowned. "Sven, you're going to have to do better than that."

"I am aware."

"Not just for the Alliance," she continued, "but for everyone. Everything. The entire world." She paused for a moment, choosing her words. "This whole war...against the Resistance, against ZAFT, against the Coordinators...it has to be won."

"I am aware," Sven repeated. Especially after the gassing of Copernicus—

"That is what I built the Crusader for," Yukiko said. "That's what I named it for. This isn't just a war. It's a battle for our survival." She touched his shoulder. "If the Coordinators win, they're going to reorder the entire world. Do you understand?"

Sven eyed her curiously. "So says Blue Cosmos."

"This is beyond Blue Cosmos," Yukiko went on, and Sven blinked at the edge of conviction in her voice. "In medieval times, a handful of landowning aristocrats controlled entire nations and separated themselves from the masses by birth. But that could be changed. The nobles were ultimately just humans, same as the peasants. They could be overthrown. Peasants could rise to the nobility. Nobles could be cast into the peasantry.

"But this is different. The Coordinators will reorder everything. They'll be an aristocracy that can never be overthrown or joined. The medieval aristocrats weren't better than the masses because of their genes. Only the good fortune that their parents were aristocrats. But that won't be if the Coordinators win this war." She fixed Sven with a hard look. "If we have to sacrifice to prevent that from happening, then so be it. It's a small price to pay for our descendents' freedom, isn't it?"

Sven scowled back. "I am not interested in philosophizing," he said, and turned on his heel to march away.

"This isn't philosophizing," Yukiko said after him. "It's your purpose."

Sven clenched his fists, fought down the urge to whip around and strike her, and disappeared around a corner.

—

With an airy, tired sigh, Merau Seraux pulled herself out of the Hail Buster Gundam's cockpit. Another fight, another draw. Those were getting frustrating. She landed on the gantry and mopped back her hair, sorely looking forward to the shower she knew she needed.

Down the gantry, Merau caught sight of Mudie Holcroft glowering up at the darkened face of her silent Artemis Gundam, as the mechanics made repairs. She glanced over at Merau, her eyes smoldering with frustration.

"Err, what happened?" Merau sputtered.

"It's nothing," Mudie snapped, and turned back towards her mobile suit. "That damned Extended..."

Merau stared quizzically at the fuming pilot for a moment. "Um, you sure?"

"I said it's nothing."

"You don't have to get snippy with me."

Mudie scowled and hopped over the railing, heading towards the Artemis's open cockpit. Merau sighed again and scratched her head.

"You know, this whole 'war' thing would go a lot better if we weren't all dicks to each other," she grumbled, and headed for the locker rooms—and that shower she needed more than ever.

—

_I so did not join the Phantom Pain for this,_ thought a resigned Grey Saiba as he drifted down the _Charlemagne_'s hallways, towards the galley, with Erin chattering away at his side. He had been told that being a soldier would cause girls to take a liking to him; he hadn't been told that those girls might also be in the Phantom Pain.

"In my defense," he spoke up, as the topic of conversation shifted to his own training days at Volkov Crater, "I was up against Morgan freakin' Chevalier, for Christ's sake. What was I supposed to do? Win?"

"Not get your ass kicked," Erin answered with a grin. "But he kicked my ass too, so don't feel too bad."

Grey forcefully turned his mind away from the embarrassing smackdown the Moonlight Mad Dog had handed him at Volkov Crater all those months ago. Erin smiled back encouragingly.

"At least you've gotten better," she offered. "Enough to take on even that new Gundam the Resistance has."

At that, Grey cringed and wished he had chosen the subject instead. The last thing he wanted was to be reminded of the Resistance's new Gundam—and the pilot, the unstoppable Angel of Death that haunted him still.

"Better, hell," he grumbled. "I'll say I've gotten better when I can beat her. Until then I'm just lucky."

"You're selling yourself short."

"Better that than overestimating myself and getting killed."

Erin sighed and apparently decided to give up, and Grey pushed it all behind him as he headed for the galley.

—

"At the very least," said Kelly Maynard on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, "we can conclude that the Vent Savior was stolen from Actaeon's development facility during testing. Which is not what they said had happened to it. They told us it had been destroyed during a test flight."

In the captain's chair, Danilov waved it off. "Someone else can be responsible for figuring out what Actaeon is up to. That's not our concern." He turned his gaze towards Shams, standing next to Maynard with crossed arms and a bored look on his face. "Lieutenant Coza, results from your patrol?"

"All clear all around," answered Shams. "There should be no problems during the repairs."

"Good." He waved over to Vera. "Begin the repairs at once. When they're done, prepare the ship for atmospheric reentry. Navigator," he turned, "plot the _Minerva_'s course and give us a range of likely location. We'll find them yet."

"Yes sir," came the answer, and Danilov sat back, just as the bridge doors opened and Morgan Chevalier drifted through. Everyone but Danilov stood to salute the Moonlight Mad Dog, who casually returned the gesture and came to a stop in front of Danilov's seat.

"I appreciate the ride," Morgan said as the two men shook hands. "Apologies that I can't stay. I've got to get back to Arzachel and file my reports on the Fenrir's performance."

"I understand. And, while you're here, I understand you were the last man to see Colonel Joaquin alive. What happened to him?"

Morgan fixed Danilov with a hard look—a look that said all that Danilov needed to know. "A stray beam caught his launch. It went up before I could do anything about it."

Danilov nodded knowingly. "I see. A shame he had to go out that way."

"Agreed."

"Then we'll get you back to Arzachel," Danilov continued. "A resupply ship is on its way here. We'll send you back with them."

"Much obliged," Morgan answered, and turned to leave.

"Oh, and Captain Chevalier?" Danilov started, and Morgan turned in surprise. "I'm told Joaquin had an Extended in his command. What happened to it?"

The shadow that passed over Morgan's features again said all that needed to be said. "Killed in action," he said, "and if I may say so, captain, that's probably the best outcome he could have had."

Danilov frowned. "I see. Thank you."

Morgan nodded and took his leave, and Danilov sat back solemnly as Maynard and Shams started talking again.

—

"Captain Danilov appears to have reservations about Alliance policies," Travis Alterman read aloud airily in the Nebula Blitz's tightly shut cockpit as he worked, "but on the whole does not appear to have grave enough doubts to prompt defection or rebellion." He sat back, stroked his chin in thought, and then leaned forward again, back over the keyboard. "Danilov may be open to persuasion or coercion. He does not seem averse to the idea of joining forces with anti-Alliance elements if it will destroy a greater threat." Another pause. "What he considers a threat, however, is more unclear."

Being the spook was not Travis Alterman's real calling, but he did recall his superior offering a fairly foolproof justification. Known to the crew as a crass, simple man who lusted after nothing so much as a good fight and some good killing, nobody would suspect him of espionage. And that made his work, though dangerous, extremely easy.

And dangerous nonetheless, because word could never get out of just who he was working for. The entire edifice of the Earth Alliance would come crashing down. He would be abandoned to the wolves. Lord Djibril would destroy him.

That wasn't such a fun thought, and so Travis returned his gaze to the screen. It wasn't just Danilov whose fate rested on his superiors' decisions, after all.

—

**May 7th, CE 77 - ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The hum of the _Aristotle_'s engines had a lulling effect that Nathaniel Hatias always had to fight. The _Vosgulov_-class never had engines this quiet, nor a hull this spacious or a mobile suit complement this generous—or a conn this well equipped.

Standing on the wide-open conn of his submarine as his crew set to work, Hatias glanced up at the map. The _Minerva_, sitting in the water a thousand kilometers off Ascension. The _Aristotle_ approaching from the north, fresh from battle at the Alliance's sprawling naval facility in the Azores. The _Aristotle_ had its orders to cruise the world's oceans, attacking any and all targets of opportunity. A major Alliance naval installation in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was far too opportune to pass up. And this one...

Nathaniel came to a stop by the periscope. "Mr. Camwell," he said, "what did we pull together from the surviving ZAFT cells?"

"Forty mobile suits total," answered Camwell with a confident smirk. "Sixteen amphibious, the rest either aerial or on Guuls. Most of them out of Trinidade and St. Helena. They're all older models, but the commanders assure me they can get the job done."

"All they have to do is drive the _Minerva_ northwest. We'll be waiting there with the second unit, and with the ship herself." Nathaniel looked back up towards the map, where the Fernando de Noronha islands loomed. "And make sure they're pushed into the archipelago, where they'll have less room to maneuver."

The conn doors slid open with a hiss. Nathaniel glanced over, greeted by a square-jawed, muscular man in a green ZAFT ground forces uniform, offering a crisp salute. "Ah, Commander Ladd. Was wondering where you went."

Alec Ladd smiled back tightly. "Preparations to the Proto Abyss are complete. We can launch within the hour."

"Easy there," chuckled Nathaniel as he turned back towards the conn, "this plan requires a delicacy of touch. Helm!" He stepped forward and put his hands behind his back, and steeled himself for battle. "Commence heading two-nine-five, depth at nine hundred meters, all ahead flank!"

—

**Manaus Air Base, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

"So," the woman said as she slumped down into the rusty folding chair in front of her equally rusty metal table, "what the hell was that thing last night?"

Major Dana Barrak surveyed the scene outside her unit's humble barracks, her officers gathered around her in their mottled jungle uniforms. Black-haired, sharp-nosed 1st Lieutenant Andrew stepped forward and plopped a laptop down onto the table in front of his commander.

"Observation tower confirmed, it was that new Gundam the Resistance has, the one that's been making waves in space," he began.

"Oh, the Midnight, eh?" Dana asked with a smirk.

"So it seems. Cat's Eye recon plane did a flyover, and found this." Andrew called up an image of the landing site—or, rather, the vast and hideous scar ripped into the jungle by the hard landing of something moving very fast. "Just on the shore of Lago Anori. Stopped maybe five meters from the water."

Dana studied the image for a moment. "Telescopes caught them with a second mobile suit, though, didn't they?" she asked. "A GOUF?"

Andrew called up another image. "There's a crew heading out from Manacapuru to search the lake right now. The GOUF was in pretty bad shape, so they might have just dumped it. But the Gundam is long gone."

Silence descended over the troops as Dana looked over the map. "Anori, huh," she muttered. "Bunch of Resistance sympathizers probably hid the damn thing." She looked back up at Andrew, and the look in her eyes was unmistakable. "One of Ed the Ripper's rumored hideouts."

"So the rumors say," Andrew agreed with a grin.

"Major," another man spoke up, "they may be sympathizers but they've always backed down when we show up in force."

"And we might catch the Ripper this time," a third man offered.

Dana rubbed her chin as she stared at the images for a moment. "Ol' _Kirisaki_ won't be that easy to catch. But that Gundam..." She looked up with a smirk. "I think we could use a road trip to Anori, boys and girls. Get our mobile suits ready to sortie and get Company B onto the barge. We have a field trip to take."

"Including the Buster Windam?" asked Andrew.

Dana stood up with an enthusiastic grin. "You have to ask? I gotta see this for myself. Move out."

—

**Anori, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

The songs of jungle birds filled the air as Edward Harrelson guided his jeep out of the rainforest and into the dusty, primitive streets of the little town of Anori.

"It's one of our havens," Jane explained from the passenger seat. "We can't stay for long, but they look after us and do what they can. They're USSA types who don't take kindly to the Atlantic Federation troops that still occupy the continent."

"Except you," Ed corrected with a grin.

"Well _I'm_ different," Jane said with a haughty air. "Anyways, you'll be safe, but we can't keep you here long."

"Not without risking a fight," added Ed, and he nodded over his shoulder, to the northeast. "Manaus. And our old friend, Major Barrak."

In the back seat, Rau sat back with one leg draped over the other. "We will cause as little disruption as possible," he said, and glanced over at Emily, to his left. "We will have to find a way to contact the _Minerva_."

Emily frowned and looked down at the jeep's floor uncomfortably. "They must be thousands of miles away..."

"We can handle that," Ed interrupted. "All they've got to do is get to the river's mouth. We can slip you and the Gundam onto a barge or something that will take you up the river to Belém. But there's a catch."

"A catch?" mumbled Emily.

"Belém is a seaport on the mouth of the Amazon River," Jane explained. "We have sympathizers and agents in the city that could help smuggle you out into the Atlantic. But there's a small naval station at Belém, as well as a larger base just north of the city. The _Minerva_, and you, will have to deal with it."

"And there's Manaus," Ed added. "Barrak is probably heading over to inspect the crash site as we speak. And if that's the case, her troops will probably be swinging through Anori."

Emily's eyes widened. "Then everyone here will be in danger!"

At that, Jane only laughed. "Oh, the folks here put up with that shit all the time," she chuckled. "They know what to do. You just stick with the Gundam and get the hell out of here if they find you. We'll handle the rest."

"But...I didn't see any of _your_ mobile suits around here," protested Emily.

Ed grinned wolfishly. "That's the point."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The DOM Trooper hummed as its engines carried it over the rolling waters of the mid-Atlantic. There was nothing out here but ocean—endless fields of blue that glittered under the sunlight of a clear sky. If it weren't for the map, Trojan knew he would be completely lost out here—and, with all the peace and quiet, it might not have been so bad.

But Trojan Noiret didn't have just peace and quiet. He had the devil of worry, gnawing at him in his gut. Sure, Emily was a formidable pilot in her own right; sure, her Gundam undoubtedly survived reentry intact; sure, she had one of the greatest aces of the Valentine War with her; sure, she had landed in the territory of Ed the Ripper, another of the greatest aces of the Valentine War. That didn't stop him from worrying. Emotions didn't have to make sense.

He sat back with a sigh and struggled to push the thoughts aside. They had sent him out here on patrol while the ship finished off some feverish repairs. He was used to this, really; life in the jungle with Barry Ho for three years did wonders for one's sense of perspective.

He glanced at the clock and then keyed on the comm. "This is Trojan, western approach, ten klicks west. Nothing to report."

Shinn's face presently appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Nothing to the east either. Let's head back."

Trojan took the DOM's controls and turned the mobile suit east. "Did they say how the repairs are going?"

"Another couple hours and we'll get going." Shinn put on a reassuring look. "She's hanging out with Ed the Ripper, Trojan. Nothing's going to happen to her."

"I guess," Trojan agreed.

"Well, I'll put it for you like this. Before he became a mobile suit pilot, Ed was famous for close quarters combat with enemy mobile suits in a Spearhead."

Trojan paused. "Wait a minute, a Spearhead is a VTOL fighter."

"I know."

"...so...she's hanging out with a guy who is completely crazy, and that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"He's the good kind of crazy." Shinn sat back. "Anyway, it won't be for long. The bigger problem is getting her out of the interior. But we'll deal with that."

Trojan eyed Shinn suspiciously, knowing that there was more to this than the Coordinator was letting on, but decided to let it go. "Then I'll see you back at the ship," he said quietly, and cut the transmission.

—

"Good news and bad news," Matt Abes said to Abbey and Meyrin on the gantry overlooking the hangar. "Good news is, the Destiny, Gaia, Vent Savior, and DOM Trooper are all in pretty good shape."

Abbey and Meyrin shared a look. "And the bad news?" asked Meyrin.

At that, Abes turned towards the scorched hulk of the Infinite Justice Gundam. "Probably self-explanatory. We're going to have to write the Justice off as a total loss. And if Le Creuset's GOUF was as badly trashed as it looked when he was heading down with Emily, that means we lost two mobile suits in the last engagement."

Abbey cringed. "We would have only five mobile suits, once we get Emily back."

"We've survived before with five mobile suits," Meyrin pointed out. "Are you sure you can't salvage the Justice?"

"The inner frame has taken too much damage. We have spare parts to rebuild the whole thing if we really had to, but we have a lot more to do than that. The inner frame needs an overhaul, the electrical systems are fried, and we have yet to inspect the reactor."

Meyrin nodded. "Besides which, Athrun has some injuries, so he would be out of action anyway."

"We'll still have to reach a location for fuller repairs, to the ship and to the mobile suits," Abbey warned. "Gigafloat, Poljarny, Aqrah maybe. But those options are all thousands of miles away."

"Gigafloat is probably our best bet," Abes added. "Should be on the other side of Africa right now. If we go there right after recovering Emily and Le Creuset, we can get started on building replacements for our lost units." He gestured forlornly at the Justice's wreckage. "'cuz that thing is beyond rescue."

Meyrin sighed heavily. "Athrun won't be happy."

"When is he ever?"

—

Sting Oakley tried not to smile too widely as Stella Loussier wrapped him up in a big, warm hug as he stepped through the crew lounge doors. Had to keep up appearances, after all.

"Sting's awake!" she exclaimed. "Stella missed you!"

"Easy there, Stella," Sting grunted, and lightly pushed her away. "I'm not _totally_ fixed up yet."

Sitting up at one of the tables, Lily frowned. "But you're better, right?"

"Yeah, still alive, can't complain." He patted Stella on the shoulder. "So what did I miss?"

The speed with which the smiles vanished was rather unnerving. Fortune intervened as Auel marched into the lounge, to be immediately greeted by an excited Stella, and Sting took the opportunity to slip away towards Lily.

"Okay," he said quietly, "really, what happened when we were out? Everyone is acting like it was something bad."

Lily squirmed for a moment. "I-It was."

"Then what was it?"

Lily closed her eyes for a moment, then sat Sting down and quietly explained—and Sting felt his blood run cold as his imagination filled in the pictures of the horrors she described. And as the story wound its way through the deathly streets of Copernicus, he began to wish he hadn't woken up again after all.

—

With little to do but let some superficial wounds heal and try to be useful somewhere else, Athrun Zala found himself wandering onto the _Minerva_'s exterior deck, under the clear blue sky and into the dancing ocean breeze. It was a wonder Stella wasn't out here. The spectacular sweep of the sea never failed to draw her attention.

Instead, it had drawn Viveka's—and Athrun decided, as he steeled himself and walked over, that as long as he was powerless for now, it was time to tie up another loose end.

"So I hear they're scrapping your Gundam," Viveka said quietly as he stepped up next to the railing. "Bummer."

Athrun shrugged. "It's just a mobile suit."

Viveka blinked in surprise and slowly looked over at him.

"I destroyed that clone of Kira too," he added, with a forlorn look towards the hazy horizon.

"I thought you said Kira was your friend."

"He was. But..." Athrun shook his head. "That clone would never have taken his place. He was an Extended. He probably would have died here. And either way...well, either way, my friend is long gone. And so is the Gundam. All my ties to my old friends, my old life..." He paused, reached under his collar, and pulled out Cagalli's pendant, letting it catch the sunlight. "Except this, I guess."

Viveka frowned. "What are you getting at?"

Athrun turned towards her and their eyes met, and in an instant he felt everything shift around him. The pain still throbbed in his heart, the voices of his old friends still rang in his ears...but they were in the past. They were irretrievable. They would haunt him forever, as they haunted him now; but as he looked at the woman before him, in whom life and death shared an existence not quite harmonious but comfortable and accepted...well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

And with that thought in mind, Athrun pulled off the pendant and extended it to a shocked Viveka.

"Cagalli gave me this, to protect me," he said, "and I told you once that I think it has protected me, only to spare me for a life of suffering. But there are other ways to look at it. I just don't know any of them. But—you're better at seeing the glass half full than I am." He gave the pendant one more glance, felt the echoes of that old relationship and that old life in his bones, and looked up at her again with a sheepish smile. "Maybe that's something you could teach me."

Viveka carefully took the pendant in her right hand, and Athrun tried not to flinch at the whirlpool of emotion he had created within her. "You told me you didn't want to forget your old friends," she started.

"I won't," Athrun answered. "But that clone made me understand that even if I try to bring the past back, it'll just be distorted and wrong, like that clone. My old friends will be with me forever, but," he offered a smile, "that doesn't mean nobody else can be."

Athrun Zala needed no Newtype powers to understand Viveka's feelings as she threw her arms around him and pressed their lips together.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The conn was buzzing with activity as Nathaniel Hatias stepped through the doors and wove his way through the flow of deckhands to the periscope, where Camwell was speaking with the conn's various officers.

"Captain," Camwell said, exuding confidence, "we're twenty minutes out from our position outside Fernando de Noronha. Ziegler and the other cell leaders have launched all units north to target the _Minerva_."

Nathaniel glanced up at the tactical map. Hounds to the hunters. The _Minerva_ probably didn't even know this vessel, the largest submarine ever built, even existed. They would be in for a difficult battle.

"Diving command, set depth for fifty meters. Flood the lateral launch bays and prepare all mobile suits for sortie." He paused and switched on the intercom. "Commander Ladd."

The square-jawed face of Alec Ladd appeared on a screen, showing the hulking man in the _Aristotle_'s cavernous, bustling hangar. "You rang, captain?"

"You've been boasting about the Proto Abyss's performance for some time," Nathaniel said, and offered a challenging grin. "How would you like a chance to prove it?"

Alec smiled back. "I'd never say no to an offer like that, sir."

"Good. We will need one of our own in action with the others to ensure our tactical awareness. I don't want to rely on guerrilla cells and survivors anymore than I must. Go ahead in the Proto Abyss and offer your assistance to Ziegler and the others, and report on conditions as they push the _Minerva_ northward. You'll be on your own amid the survivors. Try not to let them get killed."

Alec Ladd flashed a toothy grin and saluted. "Yes sir."

"Very good. Move out." The screen darkened and Nathaniel turned towards the conn. "All hands, Condition Red."

—

**Anori, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

Under the dense canopy of the rainforest, Emily von Oldendorf sat nervously in the shade of the trees and the dreadful shadow of the Gundam Eclipse, kneeling beneath the foliage, hidden from view. Rau sat on an exposed tree root nearby, looking far more amused than Emily felt, and they were all surrounded by a handful of grungy, well-armed fighters from Ed's retinue. Ed the Ripper seemed to have no shortage of guerrillas. Evidently he was a man of some charisma.

Emily glanced up awkwardly at Rau. "What's going to happen out there?"

Rau answered with a shrug. "With any luck, the Alliance troops will find nothing and decide to leave."

"And what if they don't?"

"Then Mr. Harrelson will take care of things. He is, after all, a famous ace from the Valentine War. He earned his reputation."

Emily frowned and looked back up at the Gundam, and pushed down the gnawing feeling that she should leap inside, take off, and drive off the Alliance troops. But that would change nothing. They would just come back again, probably in greater numbers, and bring down their wrath onto the town below.

"You seem to know a lot of aces," she murmured.

"Of course," Rau said with a smirk. "I _was_ one."

"You were?" Emily asked, surprised.

"Did my reputation not precede me that far?" chuckled Rau. "'The White Knight of ZAFT?' I suppose that's not so bad. It was always a rather ridiculous nickname." He sat back comfortably against the tree trunk. "I was a ZAFT soldier, yes. I fought in the Valentine War and the Junius War. I had by all measures a successful career."

Emily pursed her lips. "Then why aren't you still with them?"

"I was stranded at the end of the Junius War, and besides," he spread his arms, "would I really fit in with them anymore?"

"I guess not." She glanced back down the slope, towards the town below—and the Alliance mobile suits clustering to the southeast, on the lake's shores. "I don't really know any of this stuff."

"There is much to know," Rau said, "and I make it my business to know it. Perhaps more than most."

"How come?"

"Because, I have always wanted to change the world, as you do, but I have always had to contend with circumstance."

Emily's brow furrowed in surprise. "What...?"

Rau smiled reassuringly. "I'll explain," he said, nodding to the fighters around them, "some other time."

—

With a final yank from the crane and a roar of gushing, splattering, muddy water, the dredging crew finally hauled the filthy wreckage of a GOUF Ignited up from the bottom of Lago Anori, onto the shore.

Dana Barrak watched it all from the cockpit of her stocky Buster Windam, the drab green mobile suit on the Ground Windam's frame that carried on the legacy of the Buster Dagger and the Phantom Pain's Verde Buster. A team of Ground Windams and standard Windams, all in mottled green jungle camouflage, stood guard around the site; the ground troops were on the barges, ready to move into Anori to start rounding up subjects for questioning. Dana Barrak, after all, was not going to simply let the Gundam the Alliance had taken to calling Midnight go without a proper struggle.

In his own Ground Windam, Andrew heaved a sigh. "As we thought. The GOUF was dumped off, but the Gundam isn't here."

Dana frowned. "What about the people in Anori?"

"Not cooperating. But rumor has it that Ed the Ripper's been hanging out here lately. It might have been his men that hid the Gundam." Andrew shrugged. "Could be worth pursuing."

"And they won't cooperate?"

"No ma'am."

"I'll fix their wagon." She flipped a switch on the Buster Windam's console. "Sergeant Long, Doppelhorn Windam team. Take up position on the shore and fire some warning shots on the southern edge of Anori. Captain Ross, broadcast a message to the people that unless they turn over Ed the Ripper and his Resistance cohorts at once, our next shots won't land on the outskirts." She threw the switch again and sat back. "Damned rats always make me play bad cop..."

—

"So," Jane whispered, as she, Ed, and a handful of fighters crouched in the underbrush and watched Dana's troops from afar through binoculars on the other side of the lake, "should we go for it?"

Ed chewed his lip as he watched four Doppelhorn Windams march to the edge of the lake's waters. "I dunno. Can't tell what they're doing."

"Why would they be taking up positions there, unless—" Jane fell short and the color drained from her face. "Oh shit, Ed, they're going to—"

The booming blasts of four sets of Doppelhorn Striker cannons cut her off, and the earth rattled as the four Doppelhorn Windams fired a salvo towards Anori. Puffs of fire and smoke rushed up from the ground in front of the city, and Ed felt his blood run hot.

"The fuck was that?" he snarled, and scanned the impact zone for damage. It all ran along the southern edge of the town, not in the town itself—but it was unnervingly close, and the message was clear.

"That barge is broadcasting a message," one of the men hissed. "'Citizens of Anori, you are ordered to surrender all information, materiel, and personnel related to the Resistance to Alliance authorities. Four mobile suits are ready to fire on the town if you continue to resist.'"

"That bitch," Jane growled, "she's going to shell the whole town. Ed!"

"I know," answered Ed. "That's not like her..." He shook his head and hopped down from his tree. "Well, fuck it. Everyone, get to your mobile suits. She wants Ed the Ripper and his troops; let's give 'em to her."

The fighters darted off into the underbrush, and a moment after Ed disappeared into the shadows, two green eyes lit up in the darkness.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The sirens wailed from the sensor console as the _Minerva_'s bridge sank down into its combat state. Meyrin held back a sigh and steeled herself for battle once again. Never a moment's rest.

"Burt, enemy count?"

"Twenty-five mobile suits in the air, four on the surface, and sonar is showing eleven underwater. They look like they're all ZAFT models, most of them from before the Junius War."

"Alright. Roxy, divide up the MS team. Stella will submerge and deal with the underwater units; Trojan will handle the ones on the surface; Shinn and Lily will defend against the ones in the sky." She glanced over at Abbey. "Status of the engines?"

"Fully operational."

"And the weapons?"

"Ready for combat," answered Chen.

Meyrin sat back and let out her breath. Time for another battle. Emily and Rau would have to wait.

—

To be continued...


	22. Phase 22: Ed the Ripper

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 22 - Ed the Ripper

—

**May 7th, CE 77 - Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

The jungle lit up as a green beam rifle blast lanced out from among the trees, into the muddy wreckage of the GOUF, and a thundering explosion threw Dana Barrak's mobile suits back—

And then, a moment later, as the sky filled with firepower from within the forest, the red and gold Sword Calamity lunged out of the jungle with its swords lit up.

"Ed the Ripper!" Dana shouted, as she brought the Buster Windam around. "I should have known!"

The Sword Calamity came down with a crash and slammed its swords down onto the Buster Windam's shield, even as the other Alliance mobile suits scrambled to flank the Gundam—and all too late, as the rest of Ed's mobile suits burst from the jungle with guns blazing. The Doppelhorn Windams staggered back under the fusillade and one of them pitched over backwards, riddled with bullet holes, as a GINN stomped out from behind the trees.

"It's not like you to go threatening civilians," Ed hissed with a grin. "What's gotten into you, eh?"

The Buster Windam pushed back and threw the Sword Calamity away. "Captain Ross, back into the river, now!" she cried. "All mobile suits, fighting retreat north! On the double!"

"Don't think that'll save you, kid!" Ed roared, and the Sword Calamity charged with another devastating sword swing. "After all..."

Dana whipped around and darted aside as the water parted and Jane Houston's Forbidden Vortex burst forth from the lake's surface with a shimmering pair of blasts from the beam cannons in its forearms.

"You gotta get past _her_," Ed finished.

Dana snarled in frustration, flung the Buster Windam's railgun up, and fired off a shotgun burst that showered the Sword Calamity and Forbidden Blue with shrapnel—and before either of them could stop her, she darted out over the water.

"Andrew, Ground Windams, follow me!" she shouted, and the mobile suits raced off over the lake—towards the town.

"Oh, classy," Jane growled, and the Forbidden Blue plunged back under the water. The Sword Calamity vaulted off the shore, over the heads of the faltering Windams, after the escaping Alliance mobile suits.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"The Gaia's been fitted out with the Chaos's old beam rifle," Roxy explained at her console. The _Minerva_ hummed as its catapults came to life and hurled the Destiny Gundam out into battle. On the screen, Stella nodded. "You're gonna have to fight underwater. Think you can do it?"

"That's not scary," she answered with a toothy grin.

"Damn straight," Roxy agreed. "Out you go."

The catapult fired and the Gaia roared out of the ship's hangar. In the captain's chair, Meyrin took a calming breath and scanned the tactical map. Forty mobile suits approaching from the south; naturally, when she was more shorthanded ever.

"Dispar missiles loaded," Chen reported at the weapons console. "We're ready for battle."

"We should let the mobile suits come to us," Abbey added. "There are no warships on the scope—"

"Captain, another mobile suit approaching, this one from the north," Burt interrupted. "Sonar caught it; it must be another amphibious model."

Meyrin frowned. Only one—that was odd...

—

The beams lanced out from the horizon and slammed into the DOM Trooper's shield, and Trojan Noiret grunted as the lights flashed around him. Up ahead loomed a quartet of Noctiluca ZAKU Warriors—and with the other mobile suits engaged by other enemies, it would be up to him alone to defeat them.

At the DOM's side, the Gaia pulled back behind its shield. "Stella will go underwater," Stella started, interrupted by a bazooka shell from one of the ZAKUs. "Will Trojan be okay?"

Trojan looked up ahead, at the four ZAKUs, all armed to the teeth. "Oh, Trojan will be fine."

The Gaia, apparently needing no more assurance, dove down into the water with a splash; Trojan jammed the controls to the left as one of the ZAKUs let loose a blazing shot from a heavy "Barrus" cannon. A second ZAKU rushed in close, crouching under its comrades' fire, and then whirled towards the DOM with a beam axe wide open—

Instead of connecting, it met resistance as Trojan activated the sabers on the end of the DOM's custom rifle. He batted away the ZAKU's axe and brought the Gigalauncher to bear—only for the other three ZAKUs to focus their firepower on him and slam him back behind his beam shield.

"Dammit," he grunted, "I'm _really_ not looking forward to this..."

—

Afterimages rippled across the sky as the Destiny Gundam charged towards its prey, anti-ship sword drawn. The formation of flying and Guul-assisted mobile suits broke their ranks—but a GINN on a Guul was not so lucky as Shinn drove his sword through and slashed the mobile suit in half. Up above, a Guul-riding GuAIZ R leveled off its rifle and railguns—only for a volley of plasma blasts to come streaking out of the heavens and blow the mobile suit and its subflight system to pieces. A DINN backed away from the group, missile launchers opening; the Destiny darted forward and slashed it in half from the shoulder to the waist.

"These guys are nothing," Shinn growled, as the Destiny turned towards its next target and the ZAFT mobile suits scrambled for cover. Up above, a BABI leveled off its guns—and was answered an instant later with a beam cannon barrage from the Vent Savior, which roared by overhead as the wounded mobile suit staggered back and exploded, and the remaining ZAFT mobile suits clawed for distance and threw up a wall of firepower.

Machinegun bullets pelted the Destiny's Phase Shift armor, and Shinn glanced up in time to see a CGUE wheel its Guul around and unleash a storm of missiles on the Destiny. And from below, a GuAIZ rushed up with its beam rifle ready.

The CGUE charged in, sword raised—only for the Destiny to whip around and slam it hard in the torso with its knee. As the silver mobile suit reeled from the blow, Shinn slammed his left-hand palm cannon into its chest, fired a round through the mobile suit's torso, and then flung it down towards the GuAIZ. The green mobile suit backed away behind its shield as the CGUE exploded—and Shinn seized his chance to fire a blast from the long-range cannon, drill it straight through the GuAIZ's cockpit, and blow the mobile suit apart.

"Shinn, the sea—!" Lily started, and Shinn turned his eyes towards the water—

The familiar feeling of danger jolted up his spine and he threw the Destiny back—just in time for the ocean's surface to burst upward. A green mobile suit lunged out of the foam, whirled around in the sunlight with a long weapon drawn, and brought a blade crashing down against the Destiny's sword—

"The Abyss?" Shinn exclaimed.

The eyes of the green and orange Proto Abyss flashed pink as it ground the beam blade tip of its lance against the Destiny's sword, and Alec Ladd flashed a wild grin.

"Fortune really is on my side these days," he chuckled. "First we trash the Azores base, then we run into the _Minerva_, and then I get to fight the Destiny itself!" The Proto Abyss surged forward and flung the Destiny back. "And I've got a few tricks up my sleeve I'm just _dying_ to show you!"

Shinn ground his teeth as the Destiny pitched backwards. "I've just about had it with all these crazy motherfuckers I keep having to fight..."

The Proto Abyss charged, lance tip blazing. "Then let me be the last!"

—

**Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

Sparks danced across the waters of Lago Anori as the Buster Windam's beam saber deflected the Sword Calamity's blades. Edward Harrelson yanked back the controls to dodge the Buster Windam's lethal saber swipe at his mobile suit's waist, then pitched forward again to avoid a barrage of beams from a Ground Windam streaking in from behind.

"Roberts, now!" Dana shouted.

The Buster Windam slammed a railgun shell into the Sword Calamity's face and backed away, and the Ground Windam charged in for the kill—

Instead, twirling around on one foot, the Sword Calamity brought its swords together and sliced the Windam in half at the waist in one elegant blow. The bisected mobile suit vanished in a flash of fire; Dana yelped in pain as the red mobile suit lunged out of the flames and came crashing back down onto the Buster Windam with a furious barrage of sword blows.

"Major Barrak!" Ed laughed, as the Buster Windam strained. "Was that supposed to hand you victory? You insult me!"

"Pretty mouthy today, aren't you," Dana snarled back; the Buster Windam unloaded its missiles into the Sword Calamity at point-blank range and darted back. Ed hacked apart the smoke—and cringed as he saw the Buster Windam and its mobile suits pulling towards Anori—

...and then he smiled as four of the buildings in the city exploded upward, and two Dagger Ls, a GuAIZ R, and a Strike Dagger stood up from within the city and opened fire, and one of Dana's Ground Windams succumbed to the blasts with a thundering explosion.

"Always be prepared, I always say," laughed Ed—but he stopped short as Dana and her mobile suits wheeled around and charged into the town, straight towards the attacking mobile suits—and the citizens.

"Always be prepared, huh?" Dana shot back—and the Buster Windam pointed its railgun down towards the city, as the Ground Windams fired back at the attackers and forced them to duck behind their shields. "Then let's see you _adapt_." She threw a switch on the console. "Manaus, Contingency Plan 4A." She gave Ed a stern look. "I'm sure you know what that means, as a former Alliance soldier."

"You wouldn't dare," Ed shot back.

"They're sending it as we speak," answered Dana, "so you have a choice to make, Ed the Ripper."

—

The Forbidden Blue's trident plunged through the smoke of the last Doppelhorn Windam's blasts and stabbed clear through the mobile suit's cockpit. The mobile suit fell to its knees; Jane yanked the trident out of the Windam's shattered torso, then whipped around and swung it horizontally—right through the neck of another Windam rushing up from behind, ripping its head clean off and knocking the entire mobile suit to the ground. Jane stomped forward, twirled the trident over the Forbidden Blue's head, and rammed it down into the fallen Windam's cockpit.

A third Windam lunged up from the trees, beam rifle ready—but instead of landing a hit, the beams veered off course as they reached the Geschmeidig Panzer armor, and with a crash of machinery the Forbidden Blue whirled around and slammed the left-hand shield's extended claws into the Windam's chest, then pulled them free and backed away as it staggered forward, into the dirt.

Jane turned her eyes to the north, where the rumbling had suspiciously ceased—and her eyes went wide in disbelief as she caught sight of the Sword Calamity, standing on a small island in the lake near Anori—in front of Dana's Buster Windam and its Ground Windam escorts, all with their weapons pointed at the town.

"That filthy little bitch!" Jane cried. "What does she think she's doing?"

"Stay back, Jane," Ed warned. "She's serious." He clenched his fists around the Sword Calamity's controls. "This is a new low for you, Major Barrak. Usually you're better than this."

On the screen, Dana Barrak scowled. "You have no one to blame but yourselves for making us stoop to tactics like this. Now, exit the mobile suit, hands up. We have questions—the first of which being about that Gundam that landed here overnight."

"You're in no position to go demanding my surrender," Ed shot back.

"And you're in no position to be testing my patience," answered Dana, "so that just leaves us stuck. And Contingency 4A is in effect. So," she narrowed her eyes, "what'll it be?"

Ed curled his fingers around the Sword Calamity's controls, heart and mind racing; across the lake, Jane ground her teeth in anger as she watched the scene unfold—

And then, an instant later, the trees snapped open to the town's north, a flash of blue light filled the air, and the Gundam Eclipse roared into battle with its beam sword active. It lunged down towards the first Ground Windam at the town's edge and slashed it in two amid a cloud of afterimages; four of the remaining Windams turned their guns to the sky to fire back at the black Gundam, but it foiled their blasts with another blur of illusions and rushed back down towards the water's surface, then charged again.

"The Midnight!" Dana shouted; the Buster Windam wheeled around, beam cannon ready—

"Emily, that one!" Ed cried, and the Sword Calamity fired off a blast from its Scylla cannon to keep the Buster Windam off-balance. "Take it down, now!"

The Eclipse whirled down to the ground and cut another Ground Windam in half. It skidded to a halt on its feet and turned towards the Buster Windam—

Dana's face contorted into a scowl. "Whiskey Four, deploy the weapon! All units, pull back over the lake!"

"You're not getting away that easy!" Emily cried, and the Eclipse lunged after the retreating mobile suits. Ed moved to follow, but a moment later the sensors beeped; he glanced down at the radar, his blood ran cold, and his eyes shot up towards the sky.

"Son of a bitch," he whispered, and then jammed his hand onto the comm button. "_Everyone, get away from Anori NOW!_"

Emily glanced over in surprise—and then the world lit up.

—

**Atlantic Ocean**

Another DINN went down in flames, sparks flying from a hole in its chest, and as the wounded mobile suit exploded Lily turned the Vent Savior around, in time to face a pulsing red blast from a Gunner ZAKU Warrior on a Guul high above. She threw the Gundam into a dizzying dive, with the ZAKU straining to keep up; at the last second, she slammed on the brakes, grunted painfully as the G-forces hit her, and whipped the Vent Savior around with a beam saber in its left hand. The ZAKU pulled up—but too late, as the Vent Savior ripped it in half with a saber blow to the waist.

She glanced over her shoulder as machinegun bullets rattled against the mobile suit's armor; an instant later she flung the Vent Savior to the side as a GINN OCHER and a standard GINN shot by, both on Guuls, the latter toting a bazooka. It wheeled around and fired off a round that slammed into the Gundam's shield.

"I wish Emily was here," Lily grumbled, and she scanned the skies for a sign of her attackers through the smoke. The regular GINN burst through the smoke with its sword raised high—the Vent Savior lunged up to slam the GINN in the chest with its knee, and then with a thundering crash, Lily kicked the mobile suit away and speared it through the cockpit on a beam rifle blast. Up above, the GINN OCHER came roaring down with a heavy axe in hand; Lily darted aside as it brought the blade down and shot the mobile suit down with a blast to the back as it passed.

The sensors squealed and Lily yanked the controls back to avoid another volley of firepower—this from a GuAIZ R, another DINN, and a Blaze ZAKU Warrior far overhead. She fired back with a wall of plasma and beam fire and claimed the DINN with a puff of fire that sent the defeated mobile suit spiraling into the sea, and the other two broke ranks and returned fire.

"Well," Lily told herself, as the mobile suits arced around for another pass, "at least I'll have a cool kill count to brag about."

—

Fighting underwater was no fun.

That was the foremost thought in Stella's mind as she watched twelve mobile suits advancing towards her—and towards the _Minerva_'s stern, behind her. The water churned as the _Minerva_ dumped a dozen torpedoes into the water and they streaked out from behind the Gaia, towards the oncoming ZAFT mobile suits. Three of them claimed the three GINN WASPs swimming forward near the surface—but the rest sailed past their targets, the five GOOhNs and four ZnOs that boasted much greater handling underwater, and Stella sighed in disappointment. That meant nine torpedoes zooming around, searching for targets.

"Well," she sighed, "I'm still going to win."

The ZAFT mobile suits closed in and unleashed a hail of their own torpedoes. Stella flung the Gaia to the side and let them pass, then arc back around towards her. The nine mobile suits filled the water with phonon maser fire. The Gaia dove down beneath the blasts, letting them slice through the mobile suits' own torpedoes, but three of them survived the inferno and drove after the Gaia. The ZAFT machines broke ranks, and four of them headed for the _Minerva_—...

...and, with four thundering explosions, four of the _Minerva_'s active torpedoes struck home and blew them out of the water.

The ZAFT machines dove to avoid the remaining torpedoes—and Stella seized the chance to lunge up towards the ZnO in the lead. It swiped at her furiously with its claws, but too late; Stella dropped the Gaia beneath the blow, then lunged forward, raised the Chaos's rifle, and drilled a phonon maser shot of its own straight through the ZnO's cockpit.

A GOOhN burst through the smoke and charged towards the Gaia, masers blazing. Stella pulled back behind her shield and scanned the water behind her—where another of the _Minerva_'s torpedoes was wheeling around towards her. She burst forward towards the GOOhN, then veered off-course to the left—and the torpedo on her tail plowed straight into the GOOhN's chest and blew the mobile suit apart.

Undaunted, the three surviving mobile suits broke ranks. The two GOOhNs charged straight for the Gaia; the ZnO broke off and headed towards the surface—and the _Minerva_. Stella licked her lips as the two ungainly machines barreled towards her—and with a burst from the engines, she slid the Gaia in between them, and then turned as fast as the water would allow to blow one of them to pieces with the phonon maser. As the second GOOhN floundered in the shockwave, Stella rammed her knife into its back and kicked it into the deep—and then turned to follow the ZnO.

—

Shinn Asuka grunted in frustration as the Destiny's anti-ship sword strained against the Proto Abyss's lance. The green mobile suit flung itself back from the Destiny and let loose a blazing barrage of beam fire; Shinn ducked down towards the water and then took off with a cloud of afterimages around him, and began to feel some sympathy for the Alliance soldiers that had always been on the receiving end of the Abyss's bombardments.

The Proto Abyss charged forward and slammed its lance down again, and Shinn pulled back beneath the blows, then jammed his sword forward to spoil a slash from the Proto Abyss. Alec chuckled approvingly as the sparks flashed around them.

"Glad you're putting up a worthy fight, Asuka," he said. "I'd hate to think I'd come all this way for nothing."

Shinn glanced up over the Proto Abyss's shoulder and caught two Slash ZAKU Warriors on Guuls roaring over the amphibious Gundam's head, towards the _Minerva_. "Yes," he muttered, "a real shame."

And then, he flung the Proto Abyss back with a hard swing of the sword, lunged up between the two ZAKUs, and cut them both in two at the waist with a lightning-quick spin that sent the sword sawing through both mobile suits. The Proto Abyss let loose a storm of beams that sent the Destiny back on the defensive.

"Pretty cocky for a guy whose allies are getting torn to pieces," Shinn scoffed. The water churned as the _Minerva_ lifted off, far below. Alec glanced down at it—watching the ship head north with a satisfied smirk.

"So is that how it is," he muttered as he checked his console. "Well, Asuka, it's been fun, but don't think we're done."

The Proto Abyss threw itself backward, transformed, and plunged into the water. Shinn blinked in surprise and scanned the sea for signs of an attack—but beam fire from above caught his attention instead, and with an unsatisfied growl, he flung the Destiny back into battle.

—

The world shook as one of the Noctiluca ZAKU Warriors died in a fiery blast, and Trojan Noiret whipped his DOM Trooper around to face the remaining three. They all closed in, weapons blazing—just long enough for the DOM to crouch below the blasts, ignite the sabers on its rifle, and slash another one in two.

"Getting sloppy, guys," Trojan chuckled as he turned to deal with the remaining two. They darted apart and leveled off a beam rifle and a bazooka; Trojan jammed the controls back and absorbed their fire with his beam shield.

The two ZAKUs closed in again with a blaze of fire; Trojan fired back and then slashed the first ZAKU's bazooka in two, then whipped around and deflected a beam rifle blast from the second. The first charged again with a beam tomahawk in hand and sliced down onto the DOM's beam shield; the second slid around the DOM and leveled off its rifle for a killing shot—

"Gonna have to do better than that!" Trojan shouted—and with a shout, he raised the DOM's Gigalauncher and squeezed off a beam rifle shot that drilled its way through the second ZAKU's chest and blew the mobile suit apart.

The first mobile suit surged forward and threw the DOM back, and it expertly darted around the DOM's beam blasts. It ducked beneath a beam rifle blast, then darted forward and hurled a grenade into the DOM's face. Trojan yanked back the controls with a yelp and activated the beam shield, but the concussion from the grenade sent his mobile suit reeling—and then the smoke parted and the ZAKU charged in for the kill.

"Oh, an ace, are you?" muttered Trojan—and an instant later, he charged forward with the beam sabers on his rifle lit up, and stabbed forward to catch the ZAKU's tomahawk. He flung the weapon to the side, sending it spiraling into the surf—and then he darted back, raised the Gigalauncher, and pounded a beam through the ZAKU's cockpit.

As the fireball thundered before him, he glanced up towards the sky, stained as it was with the dark puffs of mobile suits shot down by the Vent Savior and Destiny, and scowled. A diversion that hadn't even been worth it on its own merits.

And, as he cast a quick glance to the west, _she_ was still somewhere out there.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Enemy mobile suits retreating south," Burt reported at the sensor console. "But the radar is showing another wave of mobile suits inbound, from the southeast."

"Another wave, huh," muttered Meyrin as she looked up at the tactical map. To the north lay an archipelago of islands off the coast of Brazil. "Are they trying to drive us...?" She pointed up at the map. "Roxy, what are those islands there?"

Roxy consulted her console for a moment. "Uh, Fernando de Noronha. Says they belong to Brazil."

"Inhabitants?"

"A few Alliance Navy personnel at a radar station. Couple thousand otherwise. But," she added, and called something up on the auxiliary screen, "I'm sure you'll all be interested in _this_."

Meyrin frowned at the sight. "'Dispatch from Resistance cell in Vila dos Remedios,'" she read, "'new large submarine of apparent ZAFT origin sighted north of Fernando de Noronha. More information to come.'" She glanced back at the map. Those ZAFT mobile suits weren't trying to destroy the _Minerva_—not here, in open ocean. They were trying to drive it, to the north, into the archipelago—and the arms of that submarine.

"Captain," Abbey spoke up, "Fernando de Noronha is not far from the Natal port, and the newswire has had some Alliance warships in dock there for the past week. We can turn this trap on whoever set it."

"And ZAFT appears to be banking on staying hidden," Meyrin agreed. "Roxy, if those Alliance Navy personnel at Noronha sent out a call for reinforcements from Natal, how quickly could they arrive?"

Roxy shrugged. "I dunno. An hour?"

"Good enough. Malik, set course for Fernando de Noronha, flank speed. Let's have the Alliance do us a favor for once."

—

**Amazon River, Brazil, South America**

The hum of the Buster Windam's engines over the rolling Amazon was soothing. Distracting. Dana Barrak sat back in the cockpit seat with a heavy sigh and savored the feeling, at least as much as river navigation in a mobile suit would allow.

"Major," Andrew's voice said quietly, "was that really necessary?"

Dana clenched her teeth. "Above your pay grade, lieutenant," she answered, "but suffice it to say that dropping a fuel air explosive is always a last resort kind of option for an Alliance officer."

"I understand, but still...incinerating an entire town..." He shook his head. "There's gonna be retaliation for this."

"Of course there will."

"And we don't know how headquarters will react—"

Dana cut him off with a harsh laugh. "Oh, headquarters will be happy enough," she said bitterly. "We just fried a Resistance stronghold off the map. _Kirisaki_ will feel it, in the loss of a safe haven, supplies, that stuff. And we probably killed a bunch of his men, with the shockwave if nothing else." She shrugged. "Sucks, but it's the truth."

She shook her head. It was, of course, her fault it had happened at all. Anori had one inlet from the river into the lake; she had let that inlet be cut off by Harrelson's men, forcing them to fight for their lives on the lake. And then the Midnight had shown up, and if she and her men were to survive—well, Anori had to go.

At least it could be rationalized away. The thought of incinerating a few thousand people still churned inside her, but at least there were rationalizations.

"Alert Manaus that we're returning," she told Andrew, "and to expect a retributive assault by Ed the Ripper's men."

—

**Anori, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

The stench of flames consuming everything before them filled the air and made Emily fall to her knees and retch before the kneeling Gundam Eclipse.

But that wasn't so bad—because it meant she didn't have to look at the giant flaming crater in the middle of what had once been a town.

Ed shook his head sadly and mopped back his sweaty hair. "I don't know what's gotten into her. She never would have done something like this before." He glanced over his shoulder at a somber Jane. "And since when could an O-4 order an attack like this? When I left it had to be O-6 or higher."

"They changed that, after the Junius War," Jane explained quietly. "Greater tactical latitude for commanders dealing with..." She shrugged. "People like us." Jane stepped forward and knelt down next to Emily. "Hey, you alright?"

"I-I didn't mean for this to happen," Emily whispered. "I didn't..."

"Of course you didn't," Ed said with a solemn look. "This isn't your fault. We should have taken her out sooner. I didn't anticipate her going this far." He looked back up towards Anori, towards the flames still raging at the lip of the crater. "Though I guess I should have."

"To speak truthfully," interrupted another voice, and they all turned to find Rau Le Creuset striding into view, "the only person at fault is this officer you were fighting." He came to a stop next to Ed and looked on impassively towards the destruction. "Although in purely military terms, this is to be expected. A guerrilla movement must be fought by either public relations or overwhelming force." He gestured down towards the flaming town. "As you can see."

"Well," Ed sighed with one last shake of his head, "we're going to have to do something to retaliate against this. Can't just let her fry a city off the map without answering for it."

He turned and headed towards the edge of the town, and Jane gave Emily's shoulder a reassuring squeeze before she got up to follow.

Emily closed her eyes. "I didn't know they were going to do that."

"The Alliance is always crueler than you think," Rau said quietly. "Always." He extended his hand. "Let's get up and hide the Gundam."

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"Now reaching periscope depth, captain," the diving officer reported, and Nathaniel Hatias turned on his heel towards the comm officer.

"Signal coming in now," the comm officer added—and a moment later, Nathaniel saluted the bearded man in the purple ZAFT uniform on the screen. Commandant Kovetz of the Lagash underwater supply base was a stickler for military protocol—but in all fairness, that was how he had kept up the sanity of his men, let alone breakneck production of war materiel and absolute secrecy, for three years at six kilometers below sea level.

"Commandant Kovetz," he greeted, "you'll be pleased to know that the _Aristotle_ has been running well. Your men built us a fine boat."

"It had better," Kovetz said sardonically, "since I devoted twenty percent of my base's construction capacity to it. What is the meaning of this message?"

"Reconnoitering is complete. My AWACS DINN units just returned with a full profile of the Alliance bases along the Amazon River. ZAFT forces could do a great deal of damage to Alliance military forces along the river, but we would need to destroy their first base at Belém, at the river's mouth—and there is no way the _Aristotle_ will be able to navigate the river. Thus, I am requesting reinforcements."

Kovetz stroked his beard thoughtfully. "At the moment I can only spare Commander Willard's unit, although at a later date I can send additional reinforcements."

"That will be more than perfect," Nathaniel said. "All we need to do is take out one base at Macapá and the other at Belém, and the river will be wide open for later travel, for about eight hundred kilometers inland."

"Sounds like you've thought this out, captain. Very well. We will send Commander Willard to your location at flank speed. Lagash, out."

The screen went dark, and at Nathaniel's side, Camwell glanced over in surprise. "You didn't say anything about the _Minerva_."

Nathaniel merely shrugged. "He would have emptied Lagash to come fight them, and our trap would have been for nothing. They're heading north as we speak, Camwell. Recover Commander Ladd and run through the final checks for combat."

As Camwell turned towards the rest of the conn to start handing out orders, Nathaniel looked back at the darkened screen.

_Besides which,_ he thought, _I can't have men like him breathing down my neck._

—

**May 8th, CE 77 - Manaus Air Base, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

The black uniform of the Phantom Pain sent chills down Dana Barrak's spine, and it didn't help that she had gotten no sleep the night before. Not when she could lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling and remembering what she had done to Anori echoing through her head.

On the screen, the smug and mustachioed Lieutenant Commander James Liberman looked a lot more pleased with himself than someone complimenting someone else should have looked. "The loss of Anori will undoubtedly be a crippling blow for Harrelson's fighters," Liberman said. "We are impressed with your initiative, major."

Dana gritted her teeth. "Thank you, sir."

"Which is why," Liberman continued, "I'm here to inform you of a new assignment. You'll get your orders soon through the normal communication channels. In the meantime, suffice it to say that you and your battalion will be temporarily reassigned to Belém Army Station."

Dana blinked in surprise. "But sir, that's twelve hundred kilometers from Manaus. Why are we being moved all the way to Belém?"

"Because," Liberman said with a raised finger and a conspiratorial grin, "we have a plan." Liberman's face promptly disappeared in favor of a map of the Belém area, the mouth of the Amazon, and the nearby ocean. "Our old friends on the _Minerva_ are heading north as we speak, and they probably aim to pick up the Gundam that crashed outside Anori the other day. If that's so, then they'll likely be helped by the Resistance fighters in Belém. There are hundreds, and the local commander has yet to get a handle on the situation. So this is our chance to deal with the problem once and for all.

"Your task is to make sure that Harrelson and his little band bring the Gundam to Belém. If they accompany it, so much the better. The station at Santarém is under orders to let them through without arousing their suspicions. Your task is to leak this information to them, then get to Belém as soon as possible and await further instructions. I will be there tomorrow to explain in full." He arched an eyebrow. "Understood?"

The thought of combat with not just Ed the Ripper, not just the Midnight, but the rest of the _Minerva_'s mobile suits in the streets of Belém was enough to turn Dana's stomach, and she fought down her protests. "Sir," she said, "won't that put the city in danger?"

Liberman waved it off with a contemptuous laugh. "Danger," he scoffed, "nonsense. Belém is crawling with Resistance thugs. Whatever happens to the city will be purifying, not damaging." He drew himself up with an air of finality. "I expect the same quality leadership you showed at Anori to display itself again at Belém, major. Liberman, out."

The screen shut off, and Dana slammed her fist into the table next to it, as images of cities in flames danced through her head.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"We were working all the time," Stella said with something of a pout, "but now we're done, so Stella wants to go see the sea."

Standing in front of the airlock to the outer deck, Lily blinked in surprise as Stella yanked the door open and went bounding out onto the platform with an excited laugh—and then, eyes going wide in wonder, the red-haired Extended stepped out onto the walkway herself and stared out at the vast, rolling field of blue, vanishing into the horizon under the sun and a sweep of brilliantly sparkling water.

"Wow!" Lily exclaimed, and ran up to the edge of the railing to stare out at the ocean. "Holy crap! Is this the sea?"

"Now Lily gets to see it the right way," Stella said with a smile. "It's so pretty."

Both of them fell silent at the sight before them, and Lily looked down awkwardly towards the waterline, where the waves lapped against the ship's hull. "I never got to see anything like this before. I always lived in space. There's no sea up there."

Stella nodded agreeably. "Space is boring," she said. "And cold. And no fun." She stomped her feet on the deck. "But you don't have to float around here." She frowned. "Stella wishes people would stop fighting in it..."

"Fighting in the sea?"

"Yeah," Stella said after a moment's thought. "It messes it all up." She leaned forward and fixed her eyes on the hazy horizon, where the wide-open sky above met the shimmering ocean below. "It's peaceful."

Lily looked towards the horizon herself and thought back to the battle, where she had done well enough in savaging a group of attacking ZAFT amphibious mecha—and then looked back at Stella, immersed in the beauty of the sea.

—

"It's strange having nothing to do," Athrun Zala sighed, from the gantry overlooking the _Minerva_'s hangar as he stared at the scorched hulk of the Infinite Justice Gundam.

At his side, Viveka leaned over his shoulder. "Well, there's always _me_." Athrun immediately blushed and fumbled for an answer, which only made Viveka frown in annoyance. "Or we could be boring and do it _your_ way and go, I dunno, clean dishes or something."

"I only do that when I'm the one who made the mess."

"Ooh, and he picks up after himself too! What a steal."

Athrun squirmed nervously and fixed his attention on his old mobile suit. "Force of habit. I usually tinker with the OS on that thing or something, but I can't anymore, so I'm going stir-crazy." He shook his head. "At this rate I'm going to build another Haro or something."

Viveka blinked. "Another what?"

"A Haro. A robot I made. For, uh, for Lacus Clyne, when we were engaged."

"You made her a robot for your engagement?"

"A bunch of them."

"A bunch of robots. For your engagement."

Athrun paused and considered how that had sounded. "In my defense, I was, like, fifteen," he said. "And it was arranged. And I liked robots. So..." He shrugged, and tried not to cringe as the memories trickled back through his consciousness. "What, do you want one?"

"That would depend on what the Haro was like," Viveka answered with a smirk.

"It was a little robot ball with limited artificial intelligence, and most of what it had going for it was cuteness." He frowned. "Wasn't my greatest creation, but Lacus appreciated them. I made, like, six or seven."

Silence descended on them both for a moment, as Athrun fought off the recollections. "Even makes stuff for the girl his parents say he has to marry," Viveka sighed melodramatically. "I swear, Athrun, we have got to do something about that self-destructive sense of obligation you've got."

"Oh yes," Athrun agreed sadly, "we definitely do."

—

The setting sun bathed the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck in orange light and surrounded Auel Neider, lost in thought and wishing he weren't.

It was a lot to digest. People being massacred, battles being fought, separation from comrades. The more he found out about what had happened since he had fallen unconscious at the fight at Terminal, the less he wanted to stay awake. Ten million people had died at Copernicus. ZAFT was escalating the war. Now their forces were appearing on Earth and causing the same havoc there that they were bringing to space.

If only he hadn't lost the Abyss. If only he hadn't been powerless, unconscious, out of the fight. That was not how he worked. Auel Neider did not just sit there and sleep while important stuff happened. And he was still powerless, still without a mobile suit, still stuck on the ship with nothing to do but heal and wait. What kind of existence was that?

He looked down at his hands, where the scars were beginning to fade, thanks to those cool Extended healing capabilities. But even those were a mixed blessing, because it was power he didn't really want. And yet it was power he wanted to use, even though he didn't want it; but he couldn't use it because he didn't have the weapons through which it worked. It was a mess, and it made no sense, and Auel hated it when things did that.

And then there were the other problems. Emily and Rau had landed somewhere else, far inside the South American continent, and there was no practical way the _Minerva_ could reach them. The best they could do was hover outside of some city at the mouth of the river and wait for the two of them to make their way out of the jungle. At least they had landed among friends—but still, powerlessness, and waiting.

Nothing got under Auel Neider's skin like being powerless and waiting.

—

**ZAFT supply base Lagash, Central Pacific Basin, Pacific Ocean**

It towered above them all in one of Lagash's many cavernous hangars, standing patiently as the mechanics swarmed over its body and made the final adjustments. The Destiny Impulse Gundam had proven almost as formidable in battle as the Destiny itself. It was a fine machine. It would do well.

It would have to, anyways, thought Commander Willard bitterly. After all, it would have a difficult battle before it.

Lagash was alive with activity. The base on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean was served by a huge submersible capsule, which could detach from the base, stealthily slip to the surface to deploy or receive warships, mobile suits, and aircraft, and then slide back into the murky depths to return to Lagash. It was one of the more impressive creations of ZAFT's ever-ingenious engineers, and, standing on one of the surface capsule's many gantries overlooking the _Lesseps_-class land battleship _Eckhart_ in its berth, Willard couldn't help but feel some pride—and some sorrow, at leaving this cocoon of ZAFT's achievements to go mingle with the stunted Naturals.

But that would be a formidable task as well. Destroying an Alliance base and then fighting their way up the Amazon River, decimating Alliance military forces along the way, and bringing all economic activity on the river to a halt—hardly a petty skirmish. This was the stuff of campaigns.

At his side, Commandant Kovetz heaved a sigh. "We will send reinforcements once you have broken past the river's mouth," he said. "Probably on the order of two more _Petrie_ ships and two more _Vosgulov_s. But with other projects around the world, it will be difficult, and you will have to make do with limited resources."

"I understand, sir," Willard said with a nod. "With the _Aristotle_'s help, we'll have no problem smashing Belém and Macapá. That alone will give us control of all river traffic trying to reach the sea. And that will let us strangle much of South America's economic activity. They'll be on their knees in a matter of weeks." He gestured towards the mobile suit being lowered into the _Eckhart_'s hangar. "Besides, we have a trump card."

The click of heels on the metal surface caught their attention, and they turned to receive a blond-haired man in the smart uniform of a ZAFT Red saluting.

"Mare Stroud, reporting as ordered, sir," he said.

—

**May 9th, CE 77 - Anori, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

Jane Houston sipped gratefully at a piping cup of soup, sitting up against the sturdy trunk of a tree on the edge of the jungle under the black night sky. They were still within sight of Anori—and the giant crater that sat in its center. The flames were dying down, and as they did, the smoke began to dissipate—but the sight beneath the clouds was no less heartbreaking. Not when it looked as though a huge hand had scooped up the center of the town, and flattened everything else with sheer concussive force. Slumped on a hilltop overlooking the town, she could see the campfires the survivors were kindling, and the spots of the town still burning, illuminated by the occasional light of a mobile suit at work.

All that, from one bomb.

She glanced up at the sound of leaves underfoot and smiled as Ed slumped down next to her, his own cup of steaming soup in hand. "Well," he sighed, "that was a clusterfuck."

"It was," Jane agreed, "but..." She shook her head. "Have to move on."

"Have to move on," Ed said quietly, and swallowed a slug of soup with a hungry slurp. "Speaking of," he continued, "heard back from Luiz a couple hours ago. He's got a new apartment in Manaus. Good for intel." Jane arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "Says he's heard that the _Minerva_ is nearing Fernando de Noronha. If they get past Natal, they'll have a clear shot for the Pará coast. Which means," he nodded off into the jungle—off towards the silent, waiting Gundam Eclipse— "they'll be able to pick _them_ up."

Jane sipped at her soup for a moment, thinking. "Don't suppose they could get any closer...?"

"Oh, hell no," scoffed Ed. "If Belém didn't get to them, Macapá would. They probably can't even approach the coast too closely." He swallowed more soup, and Jane frowned at the troubled look on his face. "Luiz also said that he caught some supply planes packing up Barrak's battalion. The flight path his men traced out has them going to Belém."

"Sounds like a trap."

"Definitely. But if the _Minerva_ can't get past Belém, we'll have to bring Emily and Le Creuset and the Gundam over there to the river mouth and try to get them through. And," he glanced around anxiously and lowered his voice, "if Barrak and her men are there, we really can't pass that chance up, can we?"

Jane looked back down at Anori—and the black pit in its center. "No, we can't."

"So," sighed Ed, "what do you think?"

The yawning void in the center of Anori stared back at them both and sent a chill down Jane's spine. "That's some fourteen hundred kilometers of river, Ed," she said at last. "We'd have to pass Manaus and the station at Santarém. And that's just if we want to move the Eclipse to Belém. If the rest of us are going too, it's that much more difficult. We can't sneak ten or fifteen barges full of mobile suits past Manaus and Santarém."

Ed nodded solemnly and stared down into his soup for a while. "Well," he said, "we can't take the whole force, but we can take a dozen mobile suits or so. That would be about...three or four barges, I guess. And I can get in touch with Enrique in Belém. They have mobile suits too, and I'm on good terms with Enrique." He turned his eyes back up towards the darkness, where the Gundam that had brought so much trouble blazing down into the Amazon with it was waiting. "Can't keep her here forever anyway. She'll draw too much attention."

Jane followed his gaze for a moment. "She doesn't still think this is all her fault, does she?"

"Oh, hell, course she does. We tried talking her out of it, but she must be one of those 'shoulder the burdens of the world' types." He shook his head and swallowed some more soup. "Teenagers. Give 'em a giant robot to pilot and they think they gotta change the world with it."

"Really, Mr. 'Hero of South America,'" Jane chuckled, with an elbow to the ribs for good measure.

"Hey, I'm not a teenager." He shrugged. "'sides, I like that nickname better."

—

The stench had lifted, the flames were dying down, the smoke was vanishing into the air—but the devastation remained, and Emily von Oldendorf idly wondered if she should be thankful for the night's darkness, for hiding the real reach of destruction from her eyes.

Rau Le Creuset stood over her shoulder as she sat and stared into the gaping crater in the middle of Anori. "I suppose there's a lesson for us in here," he said quietly, catching Emily's attention. "If you want to use your power, you have to accept the consequences."

Emily blinked at him. "I didn't want this to happen at all."

"Of course not. But you used your power anyway, to intervene in the battle—and the enemy bombed this town." He shrugged, and Emily stared at him sadly. "It's the unfortunate truth. Power is used upon a world that does not accept it passively. There are reactions, results, consequences. For everything." He paused, seeming to consider something. "Even me."

"What do you mean 'even you?'" Emily asked quietly, and Rau stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"I'm not unlike you, to tell the truth," he said. "It's not a story I like to tell..." Emily looked at him inquisitively, prompting him to continue. "I'm a clone of a man who sought immortality through a genetic replica of himself. But I was defective, and the man standing before you now was born with the DNA of a forty-five-year-old. I am prey to diseases and conditions that no man my age should be concerned about. All because of one man's selfish dream to create out of a human being a tool to satisfy his own desires.

"I know what you are going through because I have experienced it myself. Our fathers both created us to be tools—mine to be a genetic vessel for his own immortality, yours to be a perfect weapon. But in the course of my creation, I was made a Coordinator—and by some genetic chance, I developed Newtype powers as well. I realized that despite my being human refuse of a decadent world, a world so needing to be remade, I had the power to make it happen." He withdrew a small bottle of pills from his pocket. "But my time is short. I have the DNA of a seventy-eight-year-old man. Only my Coordinator genetic enhancements have kept me alive and functioning to this extent, and even that must be supplemented with drugs. I cannot live to see this project to fruition." He stuffed the bottle back into his pocket, and smiled down at Emily. "But you can."

Emily blinked up at him. "What project?"

Rau swept out his arms towards the crater before them. "Everything must burn before it can be set right. Ancient peoples understood this, this fact that we of the modern age have forgotten. Fire cleanses. Destruction brings creation." He stepped in front of her and turned around, silhouetted by the flames. "This town's tragedy is a perfect example. Anori has been obliterated by the Alliance—but think of what can be done with this opportunity. Remember that we saw but a sleepy little hamlet, crumbling buildings, little evidence of the great wealth of other people and places on this continent. But that is gone now. And something new can be made.

"Think of the world that way, Emily. You know this world is corrupt to its core. You've seen it. At Murmansk, at Karelia, at Volgograd, at Novorossiysk, at the site where Argus attacked us, at Copernicus. Even you and I are proof. No world that will right itself and correct its mistakes would go so far as to create us. A defective clone discarded in one man's quest for immortality? A human weapon built and trained since birth to serve the will of others?" He gestured towards the sky. "And do you remember Kira Yamato, the man you fought at Sagan City? You must not forget about him. Because he was the result of a project to create a _perfect_ Coordinator, one that perfectly expressed the traits it was designed to express—one removed from that last vestige of our original nature, the mother's womb."

Emily stood up. "If everything has to burn, then that means everyone has to suffer like this," she said, with a wave towards Anori. "How is that right?"

"I never said this way would be easy, Emily," Rau said with a smile. "This is why I said that this place holds a lesson. You intervened in the battle to drive off the Alliance troops. And drive them off you did—but at the cost of the town, because a consequence of your intervention was the Alliance commander's feeling threatened enough to drop a fuel air explosive on Anori. That's the consequence. People get hurt when you use your power. It's the same for all of us—for anyone who has ever entered battle and killed or wounded somebody else. Think of all those times it's happened over your career on the _Minerva_, at your own hand." He brushed past Emily with a shrug and headed off into the darkness. "And the most important thing," he added, "isn't what you destroy. It's what you build in its place."

Rau Le Creuset vanished into the shadows, leaving Emily alone to stare into the dark crater.

—

To be continued...


	23. Phase 23: Smoke and Mirrors

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 23 - Smoke and Mirrors

—

**May 9th, CE 77 - Codajas, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

"Okay kids, time for a crash course in Amazon River geography and inhabited localities."

Edward Harrelson looked far more jovial than he had any right to be as he crouched on a dock on the banks of the mighty Amazon, with Emily, Rau, a bemused-looking Jane, and a handful of fighters clustered around him and a big paper map of Brazil spread out in front of him.

The town around them was a different one from Anori, mostly because it was still standing, but also because it sat directly on the banks of the Amazon, and across the river's wide span numerous boats and vessels large and small could be seen plying their way up and down the winding waters. And this little town of Codajas, fifty kilometers west of Anori, was a well-frequented rest point for some of those riverine vessels—ships that could travel from the large city of Iquitos in faraway Peru all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. That was what the three barges floating tepidly at the dock were for—and that was why a total of twelve camions were hauling aboard the hidden mobile suits—including the Eclipse, the Sword Calamity, and the Forbidden Blue.

"Codajas is about two hundred kilometers from our friends in Manaus, which we'll have to pass by on the way to Belém," Ed explained. "They have a great big base that could cause us some trouble, but we can probably slip by unnoticed, since they don't check all the barges and we can bribe the shit out of them. Then we'll have to pass by Santarém, where we can do the same thing." He tapped a finger on Belém, at the mouth of the river. "Now, that we can't bribe our way out of." He looked up grimly at the men surrounding him. "Other than the Gundams, we can only take nine mobile suits. I've picked the nine of you who have the best machines and the best pilots. We'll have a hard enough time of it with these three barges." He glanced around the circle. "But I know none of you are lightweights. You can handle this. We'll be on the river for five days."

One of the pilots grinned back confidently. "They're not gonna know what hit 'em in Belém," she chuckled.

"No they won't," Ed agreed, "especially if Enrique gets his people ready. So speaking of that, we've got a lot of work to do. We set out at daybreak tomorrow." He clapped a hand on his knee and stood up. "Hop to it, boys and girls."

—

The dock rumbled and Rau Le Creuset grinned as the camion rattled past, towards the ramp leading into the first barge. At his side, Emily blinked in surprise at the sweeping, curving white and silver armor of a mobile suit.

"Is that a CGUE?" she started. "What'd they do to it?"

"CGUE Assault," corrected Rau. "Fitted with an Assault Shroud armor system for improved endurance, more weapons, more powerful thrusters..." He gestured at the graceful armor as the workers began slowly edging the camion onto the barge. "It will be my machine for combat at Belém. A bit of a downgrade from the GOUF, but I will make do."

Emily stared after the CGUE for a moment. "And the _Minerva_ will be there to pick us up?"

"Somewhere nearby. We will have to make adjustments to this plan as circumstances dictate. The difficult part will be getting past the Alliance base at Belém. Once we do that, we should have a clear path into the Atlantic."

"But what if we don't?"

Rau grinned. "If we don't," he said, "then you'll have to us make us a path."

—

**Manaus Air Base, Amazon rainforest, Brazil, South America**

Above the noise of an airbase at work and facing out towards the Osprey VTOL plane being loaded with her Buster Windam, Dana Barrak stared sadly past the plane—to the southwest, down the river, towards Anori. The smoke had finally faded away, but the recon flights had shown her just what she had done, and it wasn't pretty.

She shook her head. She knew why she had done that; orders to be more aggressive towards Ed the Ripper's guerrillas, and desperation. It was her fault, in more ways than one, that the situation had reached such a hopeless point. If she had left troops to guard the inlet, if she had bombarded the jungle before conducting the search, if she had made the dredging crew load the GOUF onto a barge and ship it to Manaus...

But there was no sense agonizing over the hypothetical. Either way, she had just blasted a town and a few thousand people out of existence, and the Phantom Pain was sending one of its creatures to praise her for it—and to do it again.

And that was even worse. Anori had been home to about ten thousand; Belém, however, had almost two million crammed into its slums. The city was crawling with Resistance fighters and sympathizers. It had long been a thorn in the side of Brigadier General Kenneth, the man in charge of the Belém base to the north of the city proper. It was an embarrassment to the occupation authorities. It was a nest of rats that men like Lieutenant Commander Liberman would take endless joy in exterminating. And she would be part of it.

She thought back to the graceful Sword Calamity and its ever-elusive pilot. And yet "Ed the Ripper" wasn't his only nickname. "The Hero of South America" was just that, and, Dana mused, he was a hero against people like her, people who dropped bombs and obliterated entire villages. No wonder the people hid him, protected him, joined his ranks; no wonder her job was still incomplete.

Hero of South America. She turned her eyes east, towards Belém, and wondered who would be the hero there.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Siegfried**_**-class carrier plane **_**Volturno**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

Silence descended on the bridge of the _Volturno_ at the sensor officer's report, and in the command chair, Lieutenant Commander James Liberman scowled contemptuously at the Earth Alliance Air Force regulars around him.

"That's ridiculous," he scoffed. "They can't have a mobile suit force in Belém. What the hell has General Kenneth been doing there? Looking the other way?"

"That's what the intel says, sir," the noncom said awkwardly. "Intel gives Resistance forces around Belém over two dozen mobile suits, hidden in the jungle outside the city."

Liberman threw his hands up in exasperation. "Regular forces! Can't get anything done. Captain—"

"It's nothing to worry about, commander," someone else interrupted.

The bridge doors hissed open and all eyes turned to face the black-uniformed Rena Imelia as she strode onto the bridge.

"Twenty-some mobile suits will be no match for our forces, as well as the troops at Belém and Major Barrak's battalion," she added. "And the Testament." She shrugged indifferently. "Besides which, your real cause for concern is the Midnight, in case they show up, and whether or not the _Minerva_ takes the bait you're laying out here."

Liberman frowned. "Upgraded as it is, a six-year-old captured ZAFT prototype isn't going to solve everything," he sneered. "Not if we throw in Resistance mobile suits. And if Kenneth was incompetent enough to let this situation fester for so many months, I would rather not rely on him to fix it in one fell swoop. Which is why," he glanced at the ship's captain, "I want the bomb bays ready for a full carpet spread. We will level the entire city if we have to."

Rena arched an eyebrow. "I thought you brought me along on this little expedition specifically to deal with the unexpected." She smirked back at the seething officer. "Don't you remember? I'm the 'Sakura Burst?'"

"I am aware, Lieutenant Imelia," Liberman shot back through gritted teeth.

"And either way," Rena continued impassively, "that's still not what _I'm_ worried most about."

"And what _are_ you worried about?"

Rena extended a hand towards the strategic map—and the tiny cluster of islands in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. "You're forgetting the attack on the Azores a few days ago. A swarm of ZAFT mobile suits launched a surprise raid—land, air, and sea. And then they disappeared again. It wasn't Mirage Colloid; they clearly had a mothership. But nobody saw the raid coming and nobody saw anything of their mothership." She turned back towards Liberman with an inquisitive look. "And all those mobile suits retreated south."

"What are you getting at?"

"It's obvious, commander. ZAFT has troops in the Atlantic; ZAFT mobile suits launched an attack on the _Minerva_ the other day; we're baiting the _Minerva_ to come to Belém..." She turned her back on the simmering officer. "Add it all up, commander, and you have a lot more than the Resistance to worry about."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"The Gaia really isn't designed for this," sighed Matt Abes as he looked over the silent Gaia Gundam in the _Minerva_'s hangar, with Stella and Lily at his side and several of the ship's mechanics down below, rechecking the mobile suit's waterproofing seals. "Those seals were designed for desert and tropical climates. If we wanted to turn the Gaia into an amphibious machine, we'd pretty much need to rebuild it from the ground up."

Stella frowned and looked at the hangar floor awkwardly. "But the Abyss is broken..."

"Hey, wait a minute," Lily interrupted, "didn't she kick ass out there against those ZAFT things?"

"Yeah," Abes agreed, "but kicking ass doesn't mean your mecha is designed for underwater combat." He scratched his head wearily. "This is all easier in space."

"Stella doesn't wanna go back to space," Stella said flatly.

"Yeah, it's boring up there," added Lily. "Besides, I thought the ship could fly. Why can't we just go over the land?"

Abes sighed as he looked back up at the Gaia's dark eyes. "Basic non-combat tactics, ladies. Less observation of our movements. Nobody's going to shoot an RPG at us or something out of the sea. The levitator can get us up to higher speeds over water. If we need to stop, it's easier to set down in the water than somewhere on land. And we can fly lower over the water than we can over land." He shrugged and handed his tablet off to one of the passing mechanics. "Better get used to it, anyways. Once we pick up Emily and Rau, we're heading back over water to find Gigafloat."

"Why?" Lily asked skeptically, as Abes turned to leave. "What's there?"

Abes smirked back. "Some new Gundams."

—

"You don't seem very worried about Emily," observed Shinn Asuka quietly as he worked in the Destiny Gundam's cockpit. Passing by on the gantry outside, Viveka glanced inside the Destiny with a surprised blink.

"Oh yeah, you can do that," she sighed. "Well, no, no I'm not."

"How come?"

"Because she's hanging out with a bunch of Valentine War aces." She frowned and crossed her arms. "Why, should I be concerned?"

Shinn bit his lip and glanced back down at the Destiny's console. "Ed and Jane will look after her. And besides, if Meyrin's plan works out, we'll be able to pick her up soon enough anyway."

"Okay," Viveka said, and stomped up to the Destiny's cockpit jamb, "what's your deal with the masked guy? You guys are all cagey about him, and it's starting to piss me off."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Shinn sat back and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Let's...let's just say there's bad blood between us."

"For what?"

"Junius War stuff. Ask Athrun about it. He'll probably tell you."

Viveka stared skeptically at Shinn for a moment, and then turned on her heel. "He'd better."

And as she stomped away, Shinn leaned forward with a sigh and closed his eyes, stretching out his senses. Emily and Rau were way too far away—and that was the worst part.

—

The cork came out with a resounding _pop_ and Roxy Bannon triumphantly held aloft a bottle of twenty-year-old scotch whisky.

"This is the good shit," she said, and promptly poured three glasses, two for an unimpressed-looking Sting and Auel. She took one up and raised it in a toast. "To being awake." Sting and Auel hesitantly took their own glasses, brought them all together, and each took a sip.

Auel coughed and sputtered as he shoved the glass back down. "Goddammit, would you _warn_ us the next time you pour us stuff like that?"

"Lightweight," snorted Roxy. "This is only fifty percent alcohol. And twenty-year-old scotch, too! This stuff's older than you two are." She punctuated herself with another sip. "So how's the waking world treating you?"

"The same as it always does," Sting sighed. "Though I kind of wish we hadn't left it. At least, not until after Copernicus."

"Oh, none of that, or I'll pour you another," warned Roxy. She glanced between Sting and Auel, the former looking put out and the latter staring apprehensively into his glass of ludicrously expensive alcohol. "There wasn't anything you two could've done anyway. No mobile suits left, and we didn't even realize they were bringing out the poison gas until it was too late."

Sting propped up his chin on the table. "How is that any better?"

"Well, what _would_ you have done if you'd been awake?"

"Probably commandeered a mobile suit from somewhere else," Auel answered with a shrug. "Who would've said no?"

Roxy regarded them for a moment as she took another sip of scotch. "Well, I'll put it for you like this," she said. "We had Wonder Girl over there in her new Gundam beating the shit out of everybody and even she didn't realize what ZAFT was doing until it was too late. Neither did Athrun or Shinn or Rau, for all their vaunted Newtype gimmicks. It was just dumb luck that Trojan stumbled onto them."

"And ten million people had to die for that?" Sting asked disconsolately.

"And now you know why I poured you the _twenty_-year-old scotch," Roxy answered with a grin.

—

The reports were rather disconcerting, when taken out of context. A swarm of mobile suits descending from the sky and rising from the ocean, seemingly from nowhere, to butcher the Azores base and sink some ten warships docked there, then slipping away with hardly a loss among them. Alliance warships all over the Atlantic sinking seemingly at random. The Alliance suspected some ZAFT submarine, but they could never find it.

But, in the captain's office, Meyrin glanced up at Athrun. He always had an explanation.

"Lagash," he said. "One of my father's contingency plans." He sat back in his chair with a sigh. "During the Valentine War, he had a supply base called Lagash built on the floor of the Pacific Ocean as an ace up the sleeve. It's one of ZAFT's best-kept secrets, but you learn about these things when your father is the National Defense Committee Chairman."

Meyrin looked back at the screen, thinking. "And they kept this secret from Wellington and Carpentaria?"

"Can't reveal what you don't know about. Only the chairman, FAITH, and select other units were aware of it."

"Well, that would explain why the ZAFT forces showing up on Earth have such well-maintained equipment..." She shook her head. "Any idea what's doing all this?"

Athrun shrugged. "I wasn't that far in the loop. I know on the PLANTs they were working on some new design for a submarine with increased stealth capabilities, so I wouldn't be surprised if they moved that work down to Earth. That might be why nobody can find the ship launching these attacks." He shrugged. "But if they want to attack us from the air, they're going to have to surface, and whatever active stealth they have is going to be lost."

Meyrin rubbed her temples. "I guess we have to hope they do so at Noronha."

"Well," Athrun said grimly, "there is another problem here." Meyrin looked up. "If this thing's the same submarine that we're guessing hit the Azores, then the Alliance is going to bring a ton of firepower into the area to sink it," he explained. "And if we don't get past the enemy soon, we'll be there, right in the middle of it. Letting the Alliance do us a favor is one thing; sticking around while they do it is something else entirely."

Meyrin looked back down at the tactical map. Driven north by those ZAFT units to the south, into the jaws of a ZAFT unit that was itself walking into a trap—but beyond that, the path north was clear.

"We'll have to take the risk," she said. "With any luck, this ZAFT force will draw away ships from Belém. And if they don't," she shrugged, "we'll deal with it when we get there. But we can't leave our pilots hanging."

Athrun closed his eyes, his face grim. "No, we can't."

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Atlantic Ocean**

Nathaniel Hatias stepped onto the conn with an uneasy air as the ship went silent. Camwell was hunched over the sonar station as the sonar officer listened intently to his headset.

"New contact," he explained, "probably a civilian freighter. I've sent us to periscope depth as a precaution before we move."

"Leveling at twenty meters, captain," the diving officer reported, and Nathaniel turned towards the periscope. And there it was, a blur that slowly came into focus on the periscope's sights—the dark gray hulk of a large tanker transport gliding over the surface with a civil ensign flapping lazily in the breeze.

Nathaniel snapped the periscope handles back into place. "Leave it alone," he ordered. The bridge went silent, and Camwell gaped at him in disbelief. "Resume silent drive. Continue on our present heading, depth three hundred meters."

He moved to leave the conn, but Camwell stepped up next to him. "Captain, we're not going to attack?"

"Of course not. That's not a military target."

"But sir, our orders—" He glanced around the conn awkwardly. "You know what our orders are. We're to attack any and all targets of opportunity, civilian and military. Flags are to be disregarded. You were there when Marshal Sunogachi told us, sir."

"I know," Nathaniel answered, "and I'm ordering you, leave it alone."

"And ignore our orders?"

Nathaniel turned on his heel and fixed Camwell with a harsh look. "That was a _Yuanmei_-class freighter, wasn't it?"

"Probably."

"And how big is the complement on a ship like that? Thirty men or so?" Camwell nodded hesitantly. "Then answer me this. What did those thirty men do to us that requires us to kill them?"

Camwell scowled back. "The important thing is the cargo inside that ship, sir. You know what this plan is about. It would only take one torpedo. If we go passing up targets like that, then we're not doing our part in the plan. That's another shipload of whatever that ship was carrying—another ship that can survive to ferry things across the ocean. How are we going to strangle the Alliance's economy if we don't target their merchant marine?"

"We're doing nothing of the sort," Nathaniel scoffed, and turned on his heel. "As I said, Camwell. Leave it alone."

Nathaniel stalked off the conn, leaving a seething Camwell in his wake.

—

"Load the Mk 9 torpedoes first," Alec Ladd's voice boomed out from the gantry overlooking the slumbering Proto Abyss. The mechanics glanced up at him wearily. "I'll adjust the homing systems myself. The torpedoes were running sluggishly in the last battle."

At his side, the chief mechanic scratched his head tiredly. "I'm telling you, Ladd, this isn't what the Proto Abyss was designed to do. The final model was only a little better in terms of avionics and flight handling, and that was after the Alliance gave it a flight unit. You're not gonna get much better than this."

Alec crossed his arms and glowered in frustration at the Proto Abyss's face. "It's gonna have to be. If I'm gonna take on the Destiny again."

"Man, can't you leave that to people with better hardware?" sighed the chief. "I hear there's a guy out there with a Destiny Impulse unit. He can probably do it. Why do it with the Proto Abyss?"

Silence descended over them as Alec glanced down the hangar, at the other mobile suits. "If I don't fight the Destiny, then who will?" he asked. "You know the _Minerva_ has been targeting our units on special operations, like Glasgow's unit. If we let them do that, then this war will never end."

"That doesn't change my point."

"No," Alec agreed, "but the sooner we get this damn war over with, the better." He glanced back bitterly into the Proto Abyss's darkened eyes. "Before we have to kill _everybody_."

—

**May 10th, CE 77 - Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

The car door slammed shut and Robert Meyers sat back with a sigh as the engine started. The press was whipped into a frenzy over this little break with senatorial tradition, but that was all well and good. While they fussed over tradition and accosted the spurned 86-year-old Senior Senator from Oregon, the new President _pro tempore_ of the Atlantic Federation Senate could get some work done before the hounds came calling again.

Meyers glanced over at the car's other two occupants and offered them a wan smile. "That went better than I expected."

Seri Minamoto glanced over awkwardly at the intimidating face of Admiral MacIntyre. The elder man, fresh from testimony in his immaculate white uniform, had the look of an animal out of its element, ready to spring. He tapped his cane on the floor of the car and fixed Meyers with a grim look.

"I think I have waited long enough to hear your case, senator," he said.

"Perhaps," Meyers answered with an easy shrug. "Of course, the downside of high office is that you can write a whole agenda, get elected for it, and then have to throw it out the day you take office and _ad hoc_ the rest. It's all crises." He glanced out the car's windows, at the retreating Capitol dome. "And we're about to create a big one."

"Which brings me back to what you're going to do with it," MacIntyre pressed on. "And I'll add that as a military man, I doubt ZAFT can be bought off. They are motivated as much by revenge as by rational self-interest. If we offer up Blue Cosmos to them, there's no guarantee they'll settle for that." He waved a hand towards the sky. "You remember Sunogachi's speech. She considers herself passing judgment on all Naturals, not just Blue Cosmos."

"Admiral, with respect, everyone can be bought off by rational self-interest," chuckled Meyers. "Give them Djibril and Blue Cosmos and they'll be on their heels long enough for us to organize a real final blow against them. Djibril is fortunate that ZAFT has been so heavy-handed that the public is too distracted with its hatred for them to notice that nobody has managed to stop ZAFT so far." He smiled grimly. "Except the _Minerva_."

"And I remind you, senator, that the _Minerva_ is still our enemy."

"Enemies, friends, that's all pretty fluid these days. We weren't exactly looking at the _Minerva_ as the enemy during that battle at Sagan City, were we?"

MacIntyre glowered at Meyers for a moment and cleared his throat. "Be that as it may," he said, "you would be wise not to put too much faith in them. They made their name by fighting us, after all."

With an airy sigh, Meyers sat back and turned his eyes towards the ceiling. "That may be useful, when the time comes." He looked back at MacIntyre, and the older man felt his stomach turn at that strange, almost undetectable shift in the atmosphere inside the car. "I suppose in the end, even if his methods are wrong, Djibril has the right idea."

MacIntyre frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Meyers said, "I'll draw an example for you. I'm sure you recall a country in the Middle East, back before the Reconstruction War? They were a religious minority, well-armed by a faraway superpower for strategic reasons, and their nation imposed a deep division between those with differing, ancient, religious claims on the same territory. It was an intractable conflict. Never really was resolved, until the Eurasian Federation just subsumed them both and put the whole region under nice and secular martial law.

"They couldn't live together without someone keeping a lid on their conflicts. It wasn't because of their differing religions, but because they had spent decades at war with each other, and whole generations had grown up seeing the other as the enemy and suffering under the other's attacks. The only way they could see each other was as enemies. They would have destroyed each other in short order anyway, if Eurasia hadn't stepped in. Almost destroyed the world, through the Reconstruction War.

"Anyway, the point of this story is that some differences are too deep to overcome. And that's what we've created with this conflict." He gestured towards the sky—towards space, towards the graves of so many Coordinators. "They'll never forgive us for the Requiem. And how could they? Their entire nation, blown away in one fell swoop. And we'll never forgive them for Copernicus. Ten million people dead in the city that stands as one of our species' greatest achievements. But they don't want forgiveness, and we weren't going to apologize anyway. So we can only fight until one or both of us is destroyed, or we can go our separate ways."

MacIntyre glanced towards a decidedly uncomfortable Seri. "And so you think the Coordinators should have stayed at Mars?"

"We wouldn't have gone after them if they did," Meyers shrugged. "Not with Djibril so distracted with the Resistance. Hell, they might have gone even further out, to Jupiter. Genetically enhanced people would be better suited to that kind of thing anyway."

MacIntyre sat back and thought of a man who _did_ change, and overcame those prejudices—and then looked back at Meyers, and decided that it would be wasted breath.

—

**River barge **_**Rio Purus**_**, outside Manaus, Amazon River, Brazil, South America**

Looming in the distance behind a blurry line where the murky waters of the Rio Negro met the mighty Amazon, Manaus Air Base stared out over the river—and over the _Rio Purus_, the rusty barge loaded with four camions that had four mobile suits hidden beneath thick brown tarps. The crew was tense. Edward Harrelson stood at the pilothouse, arms crossed, staring back at Manaus across the river. The crew was tense, yes—but not that bad, and it melted away when they looked at their hero. If push came to shove, they all trusted Ed the Ripper to save them.

That was the tough part of being a hero.

Somewhere near one of the camions, Emily leaned against the door and stared numbly into the rolling water. She turned over Rau's words in her mind. There wasn't much to argue about all sides of this war being corrupt—she had seen that all firsthand.

But the destruction, the suffering, the pain...that had all come too. There were lives shattered in Murmansk, Volgograd, Novorossiysk, Copernicus...and Argus's treachery had cost Isaac his life. And there was Kyali and Aza, who had died for so little. And Lily, who had been turned into an Extended by a crazy world.

And that led her back to Rau's point. _Everything must burn_.

She squeezed her eyes shut as the words brought back her father's voice, ringing in her head.

_She will be our angel of death_.

Perhaps that was the purpose to turn towards. Her father had given her a power that was only good for destroying things—but from destruction might come rebirth. The angel of death destroyed those whose time had come, but the death of one person made room for another. War destroyed cities and countries and worlds, but something new could be made when the rubble was cleared away.

But the angel of death still broke people's hearts. And nothing could change that.

—

**Manaus Air Base, Amazon rainforest Brazil, South America**

Dana Barrak slumped down into her seat on the humming Globetrotter transport plane and glanced out the window, where an Osprey VTOL transport was lifting off with the last of her battalion's mobile suits and heavy equipment inside. New arrivals from Maracaibo Naval Station had replaced her losses at Anori and Ed the Ripper's flotilla of river barges had passed Manaus less than an hour ago. The plan was going flawlessly so far.

She glanced to the side as Andrew sat down next to her. "The last transport is away," he said. "We're going to take off soon." He paused awkwardly. "Err, major, did the Phantom Pain really send for us specifically?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Dana gave Andrew a look that said everything, and he blanched in horror.

"Anori?" he whispered.

"Commander Liberman said it was 'impressive,'" she sighed. "He called it 'leadership.'"

"Major, I still don't know why—"

"And neither do I," Dana interrupted. She shook her head; of course she knew why. Why the Phantom Pain had been impressed, why she had done it in the first place. "We may be fighting in Belém. When we land, see about getting our men into the simulator rotation. We'll need to brush up on urban combat tactics."

"Urban combat—major, they're going to have us fight inside the city?"

"Of course. Liberman called it a chance to destroy the Resistance in the city." She sank down into her seat as the plane lurched forward and started taxiing. "Just like the Phantom Pain, isn't it?"

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle, **_**Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Atlantic Ocean**

"_Minerva_ sighted!" the call rang out on the conn. Nathaniel swung the periscope around, to the south, and smirked tightly as he found the winged battleship sailing straight into his clutches. It was always satisfying to see his traps spring shut.

"Looks like they're unaware," Camwell said triumphantly. "They'll have no idea what hit them."

"So it seems," agreed Nathaniel, and he snapped the periscope shut. "Diving command, surface the boat. Prepare to launch the first mobile suit team, Ladd in command. Torpedoes and missile command, prepare to launch a full spread."

The _Aristotle_ rumbled as it began to rise towards the surface, and Nathaniel crossed his arms as the external cameras came online and the briny depths gave way to the brilliant blue sky and rolling ocean. The six vertical catapults opened, the arms reached towards the heavens, and the mobile suits went rocketing out—and Nathaniel fixed his eyes on the _Minerva_.

"Never would have expected Captain Gladys to turn out like this," he said quietly. Camwell glanced at him inquiringly. "_Minerva_'s captain," he explained. "She was always close to Chairman Dullindal, as I recall. Some said it was how she was appointed captain of such an advanced new warship."

Camwell stared disdainfully at the monitor and the winged battleship upon it. "Oh, who cares," he grunted. "If she wants to be on the wrong side of history, then let her."

—

**Earth Alliance Radar Station Vila dos Remedios, Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, South America**

The control room buzzed as soldiers raced to and fro, reports and computer noise ringing through the air. The 1st lieutenant in charge rubbed his temples wearily—it only figured that a sleepy little radar station like his would find itself in front of an impeding mobile suit battle.

"Sir, we've got some images now of that submarine," one of the enlisted said, and a moment later the main screen lit up with the image of a gigantic submarine in the dull gray-green colors of ZAFT, with huge fins on its back and six open vertical catapults. "But there's no records of a boat like this anywhere. It's gigantic."

"Of course there are no records," the lieutenant sighed. "It's a new ship. And I bet it's the one that attacked the Azores the other day." He crossed his arms. "And the _Minerva_ is coming in from the south?"

"Yes sir."

"Christ, what a mess..." He shook his head. "Well, what all is docked in Natal?"

Another man checked his console. "Eight ships, sir. Three _Barracuda_-class submarines, two destroyers, two frigates, and the _Cleveland_. Should we call them in?"

"Looks like it," the lieutenant grumbled. "Send out a signal to Natal. Tell them we have an unidentified ZAFT submarine and the _Minerva_ about to enter combat at Fernando de Noronha, and if they hurry, they'll be able to wipe out the whole bunch. This isn't an opportunity to pass up."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"I love it when the enemy makes mistakes for us," Roxy sighed contentedly as the _Minerva_'s bridge sank down into its combat state. Meyrin stared up ahead and frowned at the looming, winged hulk of the ZAFT submarine evidently responsible for all this nonsense. It certainly wasn't a _Vosgulov_-class; this thing was far bigger, waiting at the edge of the archipelago, daring the _Minerva_ to close in and attack.

She glanced over at the other side of the island, at the Alliance radar station—the one that was awfully easy to mistake for a civilian radio station. Two could play at that game.

"Mobile suits approaching, captain," Burt spoke up. "Twelve BABIs, four DOM Troopers, and sonar is picking up eight ASHes and the Abyss underwater."

"Roxy, communications from Remedios?"

"They're shitting their pants and Natal is scrambling eight warships, including a _Spengler_."

So this _was_ going well—so far. Meyrin sat back. "Launch the mobile suits and load the Wolframs. Burt, where are those Alliance units?"

"ETA should be about half an hour, if they approach at flank speed."

Meyrin looked back out towards the ZAFT warship. "Then we have a fish to hook. All hands, prepare for combat!"

—

As a wall of bubbles rushed up around the Gaia, Stella Loussier settled into the cockpit seat and waited. The enemies were out there—eight of those odd-looking ASH mobile suits, with the claws and long shoulders. And up ahead, eight pink monoeyes lit up in the murky depths—and then the thin green trails of phonon maser fire lanced out from the deep.

Stella backed away as the blasts seared by, snapped up the Chaos's beam rifle, and fired back a volley of maser blasts of her own. The monoeyes parted around the shots and the ASHes began to close in—and Stella tensed and waited for her chance.

One of the ASHes rushed forward through the water and transformed; it charged forward with its claws open. Stella fired back with the maser rifle, only for the ASH to dodge her shots and close in; and the seven others began to edge towards the surface.

"You guys should watch the sharks," Stella muttered, as the first ASH swiped at her with its claws. "They're better hunters than you!" She slammed a hand down on the transmit button. "_Minerva_, torpedoes!"

The _Minerva_ obligingly dumped four Wolfram torpedoes into the water. The weapons immediately started up and lanced down through the sea towards their targets, and the ASHes veered off course and turned their masers on the attacking projectiles—providing just enough distraction for Stella to lunge forward and rip the first ASH's chest open with a combat knife. Seawater swept into the wound and the defeated mobile suit began to sink, and up above a second ASH ducked around one of the torpedoes and turned towards the Gaia; Stella seized its dying hulk and threw it into the path of the second ASH's maser fire.

And as the first ASH exploded under its comrade's fire, Stella darted out from behind its buckling body and drilled a maser blast of her own through the second ASH's torso.

Stella hacked her way through the smoke and drove after the _Minerva_'s four torpedoes and six defensive ASHes.

—

Bazooka shells split the air and beams slammed against the beam shield as Trojan's DOM Trooper glided into battle over the blue waters. He glowered up at the four charging DOM Troopers ahead, all with smoke curling from the bazooka barrels of their Gigalaunchers.

"I've just about had it with all these stupid distractions," he growled—the DOMs opened fire and Trojan sent his mobile suit whirling to the left, out of harm's way, and fired back with a volley of beam blasts. "You keep getting in my way!"

The green DOM Trooper jetted forward, the beam sabers at the end of its rifle flashed to life, and Trojan swept in towards the ZAFT mobile suits with a shout. The four DOMs broke their ranks and backed away—only for Trojan to rocket forward, close the distance towards the first one, and rip its right arm off at the elbow. The DOM staggered back as its comrades opened fire, but Trojan ducked beneath the blasts and finished off the wounded DOM with a blast from the Gigalauncher's beam cannon—and then darted to the side again, to flank the remaining DOMs and force them back.

Undaunted, the three DOMs split up and the first one went on the attack with a drawn beam saber. Trojan parried the blow with his rifle's blades, but then flung his mobile suit back to avoid a bazooka shell from the second DOM, and then back farther still to dodge a beam blast from the third.

Trojan glanced over at the clock and then back at the three mobile suits before him. "Fifteen more minutes before this bullshit is over with," he grunted.

—

"Like we said, just keep them busy," Roxy instructed. In the Vent Savior's cockpit, Lily nodded enthusiastically.

"Oh, I'll keep them busy, like they won't believe!"

The Vent Savior rocketed down towards an oncoming formation of BABIs and let loose a withering salvo of beam and plasma blasts, scattering the oncoming ZAFT machines. They let loose a storm of missiles, but Lily only laughed and dove down towards the sea, then pulled up sharply and let the missiles slam uselessly into the water. The BABIs pursued with a wall of beam rifle fire; Lily grinned back up at them as she brought her silver Gundam around.

"Busy, they say," she started. "I'm gonna have such cool stories for Emily!"

The Vent Savior roared forward and wove its way through the BABIs' beam fire. The ZAFT mobile suits broke formation again—but in a flash, the Vent Savior transformed and blew away one of the BABIs with a pulsing salvo of beam fire. The seven survivors arced around, training their fire on the Vent Savior, only to catch nothing but exhaust as the silver Gundam lunged above their blasts.

Undeterred, the ZAFT mobile suits arced back into formation and circled back towards the Vent Savior. The silver Gundam backed away, eyes flashing, as the BABIs opened fire with a hail of shotgun blasts.

"But that's just boring!" Lily wailed—and the Vent Savior burst forward with roaring engines and shot down a second BABI before the ZAFT mobile suits could retaliate. They broke formation again, but not before Lily whipped around and blew a third BABI out of the sky.

The mobile suits clawed for distance and fired off another barrage of missiles, and Lily could only giggle as she sent the Vent Savior spiraling towards the ocean again.

—

"A battle again already, eh traitor?" cackled Alec Ladd as the Proto Abyss showered the Destiny Gundam with relentless beam blasts. The Destiny whipped around, afterimages flashing around it, and fired back a pulsing shot from the long-range cannon; Alec jammed the Proto Abyss's controls to the side and resumed his punishing barrage.

Inside the Destiny, Shinn spared a glance at the clock as he dove through Alec's wall of firepower, sword in hand. "Getting a little cocky, I'd say," he grunted.

The Proto Abyss lunged in close with a sweeping lance swing; Shinn jammed his sword up to parry the blow, and the two mobile suits came together with a tooth-rattling crash.

"It's a shame," grumbled Alec, "that you had to go and jump ship on us. We might've won the war with you." He scowled contemptuously. "And then all this shit wouldn't have had to happen."

Shinn ground his teeth in frustration. Time always slipped away from him when he needed it to move like a snail, and moved like a snail when he needed it to slip away. "Only a man who had no idea what Chairman Dullindal was up to could say that."

"Dullindal or no, our people wouldn't have died," Alec shot back, "and the survivors wouldn't be reduced to all this!" The Proto Abyss surged forward and flung the Destiny back with a hard lance swing. "And it's not like things have been better here in the Earth Sphere, for Coordinators and Naturals alike! So how can you say it was worth it?"

The Proto Abyss brought down its lance; Shinn swung back with the sword, leaving the two mobile suits locked together again.

"No matter how bad this world is," Shinn said quietly, "it's still one we chose."

"One you chose?" roared Alec. "You _wanted_ a world like this?"

"Of course not! But if we can choose _this_ world—" the Destiny heaved its sword forward and forced back the Proto Abyss— "then we can choose one that's _better!_"

Alec snorted in disgust. "Christ, that's the craziest notion I've ever heard," he scoffed, "what—"

A beep from the Proto Abyss's sensors cut him off. He glanced down—and his face paled with shock.

Shinn seized his chance to slam the Proto Abyss back with a heavy sword blow. "And there's the other upside," he added with a grin. "Three years of fighting the Alliance gives you remarkable knowledge of where all their bases and installations and shithole little radar stations are." Alec looked back up, eyes wide. "Like the one here at Noronha."

"You bastard," snarled Alec, "running away from a clean fight—"

"This isn't a clean fight, pal," Shinn interrupted. "Never was. It's war."

Alec scowled back, ducked beneath the Destiny's sweeping horizontal sword blow, and plunged into the water.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, Atlantic Ocean**

Nathaniel Hatias could not decide if he was more angry with himself than he was impressed with the _Minerva_'s captain. Talia Gladys evidently had more than her fair share of tricks up her sleeve.

"Captain, sonar has three Alliance _Barracuda_-class submarines on an attack bearing," Camwell said urgently. "And there's five surface ships—one of them a carrier that's launching mobile suits. We'll be caught."

"No we won't," Nathaniel said sharply, and stepped onto the conn to command his crew's attention. "Recall our mobile suits. Once they're aboard, make our depth 300 meters, engage the silent drive, and take us northwest, course one-six-zero." He turned. "Comm officer, get me a laser line to the _Minerva_ immediately."

The comm officer blinked in disbelief and Camwell turned to stare at Nathaniel. "T-The _Minerva_—?" started the comm officer. Nathaniel gestured impatiently, the comm officer hesitantly returned to his board, and Nathaniel turned to face the main screen.

"Captain, what are you doing?" hissed Camwell. "Communication with hostiles is—"

"Go plot the course," Nathaniel interrupted. "Now."

The screen came to life—and both men stared in shock as the face that greeted them was not the face of Talia Gladys.

On the screen, Meyrin Hawke put on her most imperious face as she stared at the men from the bridge of the _Minerva_. "Are you gentlemen surrendering?"

Nathaniel recovered first. "Where is Captain Gladys?"

Meyrin's eyes flickered with emotion for a moment. "That's not an answer to my question."

"Answer mine and I'll answer yours."

Silence hung in the air between them for a moment. "Captain Gladys died at Solomon's Sword," she said at last, "so I am the _Minerva_'s captain. And I have a positron cannon trained on your ship as we speak. Are you surrendering? Or would you rather surrender to the Alliance?"

Camwell scowled back. "Nobody said anything about surrendering, you bitch. You haven't won yet—"

"Camwell, shut up," Nathaniel cut in, and stepped in front of the sputtering man. "Well, I was expecting to be speaking with Talia Gladys. But I'll have to settle for you, miss..."

"Hawke," Meyrin supplied. "_Captain_ Hawke."

Nathaniel arched an eyebrow. "_Captain_ Hawke, huh?"

"If you have a point, you should make it already," Meyrin interrupted. "Because I am certainly not sticking around to watch you fight the Alliance."

"Feisty little thing, aren't you?" chuckled Nathaniel. "I think my point makes itself, but I would like to know why the great _Minerva_, crewed as it is by Coordinators, is fighting against an army of Coordinators trying to carve out a secure existence for the Coordinator people. Especially after all that I'm sure you've seen here in the Earth Sphere. I'm sure—"

"Malik," Meyrin interrupted, "take us out of here, flank speed." She returned her gaze to the _Aristotle_'s captain. "If you're trying to convince me to change sides, captain, you're wasting both our time. My ship is on the side of what's right. Your side is the one that's been gassing colonies and attacking civilians with impunity. I don't need to rethink whose side I'm on." She narrowed her eyes, and Nathaniel felt something churn inside him. "You do."

The screen went dark, and up above, the _Minerva_ roared away over the islands with its mobile suits.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

With a heavy sigh and throbbing temples, Meyrin slumped back in the captain's chair and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Roxy, next time an enemy warship hails us in battle to philosophize, tell them to go screw themselves," she ordered.

"Well, hey, that might've been important!" Roxy wailed defensively. "It was the last time!"

"Get our mobile suits aboard and quit whining," snapped Abbey, and then she turned towards Meyrin. "With our present course we'll be able to swing near the mouth of the Amazon. But there are two Alliance bases that will prevent us from getting close. If we're going to recover Emily and Rau, we're going to have to think up a plan."

"I know," Meyrin said, and she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling in aggravation. "I'm working on that."

She turned her eyes back towards the sea, towards the hazy horizon. Somewhere out there was the masked ace that Shinn and Athrun hated so much, and the rising star of their team.

And somehow, that combination made her feel uneasy.

—

To be continued...


	24. Phase 24: Convergence

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 24 - Convergence

—

**May 10th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"Here it is, sir," the gruff chief mechanic said as he came to a stop on the gantry, overlooking one of Messiah's sweeping mobile suit hangars. "GSX-401FW Stargazer, reassembled."

With a _clack_ of boots on metal, Kira Yamato landed gracefully in front of his entourage of officers and mechanics, and straightened up to survey the monster before him. Gleaming white from a fresh coat of paint, eyes dark, standing tall and proud over everything else in the hangar, the Stargazer stared out at them with all the majesty of a king.

Kira frowned at the white mobile suit with a Gundam's face. "That was fast. We only even captured it about a month ago."

"Time flies when you're having fun," the mechanic answered with a grin. "We've figured out the Voiture Lumiere system. In its present state, it spreads a thin sail of light inside that big ring and uses a purpose-built laser to start moving. It starts out slow but can accelerate pretty much indefinitely. Good for deep space travel, not so good for combat, but," he called up a tablet, "we've got some technicians working on _that_ too. We suspect the Nightfall includes a military version of the Voiture Lumiere, but how the Resistance got their hands on it, we haven't a clue."

Memories arose of that Gundam Kira had fought at Sagan City, the one his troops had taken to calling "Nightfall." The one that had fought him to a standstill as his troops were mowed down by Resistance and Alliance forces that were prepared for it this time.

His blood burned at the thought of her. He had been made to be the perfect Coordinator, but she...yes, she was something even worse. Something that had no place in his new world. The world of Newtypes and progress and understanding had no room for someone whose purpose of existence was merely to destroy.

There could be no Angel of Death in the new world that Kira would create. He clenched his fists around the railing.

"If the Stargazer itself is done as a study object," he said quietly, "then when you come up with the military version of the Voiture Lumiere, I want this mobile suit refit. For combat."

The chief blinked. "For combat, sir?"

"As soon as you can. I'll instruct the technical division to draw up blueprints." He turned towards Kayla, the lone person among the knot of officers and mechanics in the ZAFT Red uniform. "And Kayla, we're going to have to select a pilot. We have some research to do."

He thought back to that girl in the Nightfall, that Angel of Death. Even she, after all, had a creator—and everything that was created could be destroyed.

—

**River barge **_**Rio Purus**_**, Amazon River, Brazil, South America**

The waters of the Amazon rolled lazily past as the _Rio Purus_ led the way down the winding river. The waterway was alive with not only wildlife in the waters but more barges and vessels on the surface, taking advantage of the Amazon's width to carry goods thousands of kilometers inland. And every so often, an Alliance missile boat would speed by and ramp up the tension among the fighters aboard the barge.

On the barge's deck, Emily felt herself tense as one of those missile boats rumbled by and threaded its way through a throng of smaller boats. That was the third one today. The Alliance expected something.

"It's not out of the ordinary," someone said, startling Emily, and she turned to find Edward Harrelson emerging from the pilothouse. "They have missile boats going up and down the length of the river." He waved a hand towards the east. "You'll see. In Belém they've got dozens of those things in dock."

Emily smiled wanly. "Should I blow them all up while we're there?"

"If you wouldn't mind." He hopped down next to her and let out a big sigh as the missile boat disappeared around a bend. "I hope you're not still blaming yourself for what happened at Anori."

Emily blinked. "But—but if I hadn't—"

"Yeah, see, you are," Ed interrupted. "Stop it. It's not your fault." He crossed his arms and cast his glance down the river. "I've fought against that woman for two years. She's never done anything like that before, but other Alliance officers have. I bet they've been ordered to be more forceful against us." He shrugged. "It draws the lines pretty clearly for you, I guess."

The memories drifted up of allies turning on each other and cities laid waste. Emily cringed. "I guess."

Ed arched an eyebrow. "You guess?"

"Well, it's not like the Resistance is any better," she said with a sigh. "Always turning on each other, going after civilians, putting their own interests first..." Emily shrugged. "I don't think the lines are very clear."

"They're clear enough for me," replied Ed. "Unless you've been meeting Resistance fighters who are also conducting genocide." He paused and studied the young Natural girl's face for a moment. "Y'know, moral relativity is all well and good in those muddled gray cases where it really could go either way. But some things are really very clear."

Emily stared uncomfortably at the water, and Ed heaved a sigh and headed off around a corner.

—

"So," said Rau Le Creuset in the barge's pilothouse, peering up at a GPS map, "the passage at Santarém will be difficult. The river's course forces us to pass close to the city."

The pilot glanced over anxiously at Rau. At the other end of the room, Jane glanced up at the map herself and shrugged.

"It's nothing we haven't done before," she replied. "The station at Santarém is usually pretty lax anyway." She glanced up ahead, then over at the pilot. "Raul, signal to the other barges. Missile boat is clear. Return to flank speed."

The barge rumbled as its engines came back to life. Rau paused and studied the face of the woman that ZAFT feared as the White Whale—the undefeated ace of underwater combat, the one that dozens of ZAFT pilots had sought, only to be destroyed when they eventually found her.

"I must say," he spoke up, "I'm surprised that you've got such an organized operation here. After ZAFT retreated, I had heard you were reduced to hiding out in the jungle."

Jane glanced over skeptically at the masked man. "No more inglorious than what you've been up to, I'm sure."

"But you gave up a lot when you defected," continued Rau. "A commissioned officer in the Alliance, an ace pilot with a clear path to promotion and prosperity..." He shrugged. "Not many people in this world are willing to forgo those pleasures for," he waved a hand at the river, the grimy boats on it, the world around them, "_principles._"

"Are you saying I made a mistake?"

"Not at all. I'm simply remarking on your unusual career choice."

Jane stared into the river and the jungle beyond it, teeming with life. "What was I supposed to do?" She turned her eyes back towards Rau. "Anyway, it should be pretty obvious why _I'm_ here. But you, Mr. White Knight of ZAFT, that's more interesting to me."

Rau smirked back. "I'm afraid my tale is a bit less prosaic than yours. I was simply left behind, and in my time in ZAFT, I developed a few enemies within the organization—enemies, which, as luck would have it, survived Solomon's Sword and took over the leadership. So," he shrugged, "here I am."

"And you said _I_ gave up a lot?" chuckled Jane.

"Oh no, Ms. Houston," Rau said with a laugh of his own, as he reached out with his senses to find Emily near the barge's bow, flickering with anxiety. "It all depends on how you look at it."

—

**Belém Air Base, Belém, Brazil, South America**

Brigadier General Bradley Kenneth gave the impression of an overgrown drill sergeant, with his bald head, thick dark aviators, black mustache, and the cigar that was seemingly a permanent fixture between his teeth. In Dana Barrak's mind, that called up the unpleasant memories of basic training, and that made it even worse to be stared down under the general's unrelenting glare.

Especially after that training had failed her.

"Command is pleased about what happened at Anori," Kenneth rumbled. "It's a tactical success, I guess. Now _Kirisaki_ and his men can't use it." He arched a bushy eyebrow, and Dana idly considered telling him that the incident had spun out of control. But desperation in an Earth Alliance field officer was not smiled upon. "But suffice it to say," the general continued, "there will be none of that in Belém. This is no little fishing village. It's one of the busiest ports on Earth."

"I understand, sir."

The general sighed heavily and sat back in his desk chair. "The _Volturno_ arrived in Macapá earlier today," he went on. "Commander Liberman is bringing reinforcements. And he's bringing Rena Imelia."

Dana blinked in disbelief. "Rena Imelia? The Sakura Burst, here? General—"

"Yeah, they're serious," Kenneth said, "and they're probably aiming to destroy the city too." He scowled around his cigar and glanced out his office window. "I keep telling them my strategy needs time and civilian support, but..." Kenneth shook his head. "Well, if they want to destroy the city, there's probably nothing we can do to stop it. But we are soldiers of the Earth Alliance Army, and we're better than that." He gave Dana a hard look. "Right?"

Dana swallowed the lump in her throat. "Yes sir."

—

**May 11th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"We would feel much better if you could send mobile suits," explained the dark-skinned man on the auxiliary screen, through his scraggly beard and disheveled hair. "The _Minerva_'s mobile suits joining us in battle would be a big morale boost."

Meyrin frowned. "I know, Enrique," she said, "but like I said, we only have four mobile suits left. And the fifth is somewhere in the Amazon."

"Alright," Enrique said with a sigh, "then this is how it'll be." He replaced his face on the monitor with a wire map of the winding Amazon River. "The Ripper and his team are heading upstream. We're launching an attack on Belém when they arrive. We, uh, have our own reasons for that. Your pilots will be able to slip through in the confusion and get out to sea." Enrique reappeared. "But we'd feel better about our chances in all this if we had your assistance."

"I understand," Meyrin answered. "We can send you two mobile suits, and if you're able to destroy enough warships in port, we can come closer and provide fire support. But we're shorthanded too."

Enrique looked disappointed, but nodded anyway. "Alright. I'll let them know." He offered a weary smile. "We'll see you in Belém, captain."

—

The Destiny Gundam's mighty Arondight sword fell into place with a crash that echoed through the _Minerva_'s hangar, and at the controls to the crane, Shinn Asuka glanced tiredly up at his trusty steed's darkened eyes. The Destiny could still fight, but it had been outclassed—by Kira Yamato and by the Devil's Saber—and its age was starting to show.

That was a distressing thought, as he looked around the hangar, at all the empty berths. The Abyss, the Chaos, the Legend, the Savior, now the Infinite Justice...and with Emily off on some Amazonian adventure, that left the Destiny and Gaia as the _Minerva_'s defenders. Well, them and the Vent Savior and Trojan's long-suffering DOM.

He glanced down wearily at the tablet Abes had given him—the one with his new Gundam, the one waiting to be built in the machine shops of Gigafloat, lazily spinning on a wire grid. A sleek, knightly, thruster-studded ersatz Destiny, tuned to his specifications. The Resistance's technicians had shown great inventiveness in new technology and performance for these Gundams, but not so much in their appearance.

But Gigafloat was on the other side of Africa, and the new Zulfiqar Gundam was yet to be built, so pining away for more power didn't do anything but frustrate him in the present. Another hard lesson of the Junius War.

Shinn looked back towards the empty berth where the Eclipse would have stood. No doubt Rau Le Creuset was milking this opportunity for all it was worth. And Emily was someone who might be receptive to the masked man's ominous message.

He shook his head, and wondered if he had created a monster.

—

"Really?" whined Auel Neider in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge. "You guys have _nothing_? Not even, like a GINN or something?"

Slumped on one of the benches, Athrun managed only a shrug. "I don't have a mobile suit anymore either," he said. "Unless you want to try using the Gyroheli."

On the other side of the bench, Sting stared disdainfully into his coffee. "Aren't we going to Gigafloat after this? I don't really like just sitting around with my thumb up my ass."

"No one does," answered Athrun, "but there's nothing we can do. And at Gigafloat we'll still have to run testing and whatnot." He glanced ruefully at the darkened main screen, imagining for himself the images of the ZAFT fleet in space. "Which we don't really have time for..."

"What do you mean?"

Athrun gestured towards the ceiling—towards the sky, the stars. "ZAFT can't keep up this kind of guerrilla action for long. Sooner or later the Alliance will break through the shoal zone at L5 and attack Messiah directly. All these attacks, like the one at Copernicus, they're all doing major damage...but sooner or later, ZAFT is going to go for broke."

Auel frowned. "What are they gonna do, throw pieces of the PLANTs at the Earth?" He shrugged. "We have meteor breakers and nuclear weapons. That would never work."

"No, it wouldn't," agreed Athrun, "which is why I'm worried that they've got another idea." He closed his eyes. "A worse one."

—

Matt Abes scratched his head with a heavy sigh as the crane lifted out the Infinite Justice's nuclear reactor from the Gundam's broken corpse. At least that thing was salvageable, but the rest was now so much scrap metal.

"Man, he's gonna bitch up a storm about this," sighed Viveka, standing next to Abes with crossed arms. "Gonna be all I can do to shut him up about it."

Abes arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" Viveka grinned back, Abes blinked, and then he looked back at the suspended reactor. "Did you two finally get together?"

"You could say that."

"Well thank fucking God. That should lower the ambient angst level."

Viveka pouted. "I'm glad you're so happy for us."

The reactor swung slowly from the Justice's gutted body towards the crate nearby, where Yolant was waving up above to lower the machine into place for storage. Abes stood back with crossed arms and a skeptical look. "Guess that's kept you from worrying too much over your sister, then."

"I _wasn't_," Viveka said, "until Shinn mentioned to me how worried _he_ is."

"The hell's he worried about? She's hanging out with a ZAFT ace from two wars."

Viveka glanced up towards the silent Destiny Gundam. "That's what I'd like to know."

—

**May 12th, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Eckhart**_**, Strait of Magellan**

Humming along at the fastest speed consistent with safety, the _Eckhart_ cut a striking silhouette in the narrow, treacherous channels of the Strait of Magellan. It was a great inconvenience for the _Eckhart_ and its three escorts, the _Petrie_-class ships _Tonegawa_ and _Morgan_ and the _Vosgulov_-class submarine _Bushnell_, to go this far south in order to reach northeast Brazil. But nobody was about to let four ZAFT warships through the Panama Canal, and any attempt to force their way through would probably damage the canal, destroy the locks, and trap the attackers dozens of kilometers inland to die a fairly embarrassing death.

And so, standing on the _Eckhart_'s bridge with arms crossed imperiously as he oversaw the passage, Commander Willard tried to remind himself that patience was a virtue. The _Lesseps_ and _Petrie_-class ships could make nearly eighty knots on the surface in good seas, but here in the strait they had to cut their speed dramatically. The longer this trip took, the longer he had to risk detection and advance warning for Macapá and Belém—and the greater the chance that the _Minerva_, the tasty fringe benefit of this operation, might slip away.

He frowned as the _Eckhart_ cruised forward. Between the _Minerva_, the _Aristotle_, the Alliance troops, and what ZAFT spies were calling "an unusual activity among Belém's Resistance community," this would be quite the battle.

Somewhere down in the hangar was the Destiny Impulse and its vindictive little pilot. Mare Stroud had been the test pilot for the X31S Abyss at Armory 1 when the Junius War broke out and he was gravely wounded during the hijacking. He had spent the war in a hospital bed, and although he had acquitted himself well in battle at Mars, well, pathetic Martian rabble just wasn't the same. Mare Stroud's blood burned for a chance to settle the score with the man who had eventually been chosen as the Impulse's pilot, the man who was now the Resistance's hero. That slight had turned from annoyance to vicious, bubbling hatred. It would probably get him killed, but the point was the damage he could do until he burned out.

For his part, Willard didn't care, but blood feuds had their uses. He would just have to get there first.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

Camwell scowled through the periscope at the image of another civilian freighter chugging along on the surface. It was a perfect target, lying there atop the rolling ocean without any indication that it knew the _Aristotle_ was lurking beneath the waves. One torpedo was all it would take. One measly little torpedo.

Instead, he glanced up as Nathaniel Hatias stepped onto the conn.

"Another contact, sir," the sonar officer reported. "_Maguchi_-class freighter. Sending out a civilian IFF."

"Leave it alone," Nathaniel ordered. "Depth back to three hundred meters."

Camwell shook his head in frustration. It had been humiliating enough to quickly pack up the mobile suits at Noronha, slip beneath the waves, activate the silent drive, and flee north to avoid the Earth Alliance—the same Earth Alliance they had come here to fight. Half their advantage came from the terrifying reputation of a ship that could appear anywhere, attack with impunity, and vanish into the murky deep, only to do it again somewhere else. And yet they had run away, like little children, at the first sign of an opportunity to demonstrate that even if the Alliance ever found them, the _Aristotle_ would have nothing to fear.

But those Alliance ships had scattered east, after a sonar decoy designed to emulate the _Aristotle_'s engine noise and sonar signature, while the ship itself turned northwest—towards its rendezvous with the hard-charging Commander Willard outside Belém. And there they would smash open the two gates to the Amazon River, to let Willard and his men storm into the continent and do what damage they could.

Camwell glanced distastefully at Nathaniel. Surely he would have an objection to _that_, too.

Because, in the final analysis, that was what it would take to protect the Coordinator nation. Nothing but stark, grisly chaos on Earth, the kind that would really hurt Djibril and his Blue Cosmos cronies. Economic catastrophe, rioting in the streets, internal dissent and intrigue—those were the baneful ingredients that made empires fall. ZAFT would simply be here to speed it all along.

Camwell stepped aside as Nathaniel crossed his arms and surveyed the conn. "Captain," he said, "we're going to have to explain why we passed up all these targets of opportunity. We have close to a thousand torpedoes in the holds. There's no reason not to—"

"Sure there is," Nathaniel interrupted. "The Corsica Treaty, for one."

"The Corsica Treaty," Camwell sputtered. "Captain, if that treaty was worth the paper it was printed on, we wouldn't be here. It didn't do a damned thing to stop the Requiem, or all the other things that have happened to us."

"No, it didn't," agreed Nathaniel. "The treaty may be worthless, but the moral values and principles behind it—if you don't have those, you're just a mindless beast." He glanced meaningfully at Camwell, and the vice-captain felt his blood begin to steam.

"Captain," he growled, "we both know what this ship was built to do. We both know why the silent drive was developed. There's no ordinary reason for a submarine to carry so many missiles, torpedoes, and mobile suits. A _Vosgulov_-class would have done just fine. Captain, we were _meant_ to go terrorizing the Earth's oceans. If we leave the civilians out, what, exactly, is so terrifying about us?"

Nathaniel cast a sidelong glance towards his executive officer, and then shook his head sadly. "Camwell," he said with a disappointed sigh, "didn't you pay attention in Military History lecture? Nobody is afraid of us. They just hate us, and want to destroy us all the more." He looked back at the periscope. "And no matter what we destroy, nobody will ever stop."

The captain left the conn with another shake of his head, leaving Camwell boiling with rage.

—

**River barge **_**Rio Purus**_**, outside Santarém, Amazon River, Brazil, South America**

A little police speedboat cut its way over the black waters of the Amazon River at night, under the lights of the city of Santarém. On the _Rio Purus_' deck, Emily watched it glide past with rumbling engines. True to Ed's word, the passage here had taken only a little bit of bribery, and now Ed the Ripper's four river barges and their mobile suits were well on their way to Belém.

She looked up towards the sky, through the moonlight, as the _Rio Purus_ began to pick up speed. The Moon was up there; so was her father. The thought made her blood run cold. Her father had created her to be what she was now. To destroy. But from destruction could come rebirth. So said Rau.

But the destruction still had to happen.

Thinking of her father was no good, so Emily turned her thoughts towards her mother, the parent who had actually loved her—the parent who had taught her, with her own passing, that destruction was a hard thing to stand. And what had that destruction created? She could only look at herself—spending years as her father's little science project, as one of Lord Djibril's minions, as this Resistance fighter who turned ever more into a puppet, still dancing on the strings for her father even from thousands of miles away.

She thought back to what he had said—that she was responsible for her mother's death. And on the face of it, that was ridiculous...but only on the face of it.

Emily glanced down the barge's hull, towards the truck on which her Eclipse rested beneath a tarp. The power, Selene had told her, to end this war. The power to make the world change.

It was dizzying.

—

**May 13th, CE 77 - Heaven's Base, Iceland**

"Listen, Djibril," said Lucs Kohler in the quiet observation gallery above Heaven's Base's control room, "we are not joking about this. They gassed Copernicus and now they have this new submarine attacking Alliance forces on Earth. They've blown up colonies and brought space trade to a standstill. I don't understand why you want to wait to strike Messiah."

In his plush armchair with his imperious black cat on his lap, Lord Djibril fixed Kohler with an exasperated look. "Have you read the last dispatches we got from our agents on Mars?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Then I'm sure you'll recall the battle at Deimos," Djibril continued, "where that Beelzebub Array Vargas put so much faith in was used. It could not break through Messiah's beam shield. Thus, we have no reason to suspect that the Requiem cannon could do the same. And therefore, I will not risk lowering the Mirage Colloid protection for the relay points to make a useless gesture."

Kohler sputtered in confusion. "Then why not send the Space Force?"

Djibril waved a hand contemptuously. "You've seen the charts. The shoal zone is too dense for a fleet action." He shook his head. "Had I known it would present such a problem, I would have had that shoal zone cleared long ago. But my strategy is decided. We will chip away the ZAFT fleet until Messiah can do no more but sit at L5 and starve. Sooner or later they will emerge. They must. Sunogachi can't keep a bunch of hateful, angry people cooped up in a graveyard forever. And when they do," he grinned viciously, "we will pounce."

"And you're willing to take the political heat for this?" Kohler asked.

"Political heat," scoffed Djibril, "every day we're destroying another ZAFT unit. Every day brings some form of success. It's merely a matter of holding everything together until ZAFT has no troops left. Then Messiah will have to emerge and we can finish the Coordinators off for good. Besides which," he smirked, "as long as ZAFT is running around slaughtering people, it helps our cause anyway. The case that Coordinators are evil beings out to destroy us is remarkably easy to make when they go actually trying to destroy us."

Kohler fidgeted in his seat. "This is a fine line you're walking, Djibril," he mumbled. "It would be better if you could find a way to smash them in one blow." He gave Djibril a pointed look. "After all, there's still the Resistance to worry about."

Lord Djibril turned his eyes out towards the control room of Heaven's Base, and the black-clad soldiers hard at work below. "You must have the stomach for what we're doing, Lucs," he said at last. "Our blue and clean world demands nothing less."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

It was something of an open secret that Stella Loussier was only a mediocre dancer.

This would have been news to Stella, of course, because dancing ranked up there with looking at the sea and caring for her trusty freshwater fish among her favorite things to do. But, as Shinn Asuka idly watched her twirl like a ballerina on the _Minerva_'s wide-open exterior deck, excellence in form and technique never was her motivation in the first place.

She had tried to get him to dance with her once. Shinn decided not to dwell on that.

"You know Stella," he spoke up, catching her attention, "when this whole war is over, we could sign you up for dance lessons."

Stella stopped dancing with a confused look. "Dance...lessons...?"

"Yeah. They'd teach you how to dance in all kinds of different ways. Would you like that?"

The blonde Extended girl looked down at herself, still baffled. "Stella can dance already..."

Shinn shrugged. "It would be something to do."

That was even worse, ultimately, because Shinn had given no thought to what they would do after the war. It depended in part on how the war ended. And he certainly didn't know how this war would end, or even how he wanted it to end. At this point he simply assumed that it would be something to escape, not to end.

That, he realized, was a horrible way to look at war.

Stella seemed to catch the breeze and twirled away towards the center of the platform. Shinn watched with a tired sigh, and wondered what she would want to do.

—

Athrun Zala watched in a kind of horrified awe as Roxy Bannon dug through her liquor cabinet and then popped back out with a tall and unmarked bottle. She whirled around with the most evil grin Athrun had ever seen on a human face.

"This, my friend," she said, "is absinthe. Powerful stuff. Knock you flat on your ass for, like, ever. Books have been written on this stuff. Songs. Plays. Poems. It is the muse in liquid form. It will transport you to a completely new kind of fucked up."

Athrun stared apprehensively at the bottle. "And...you're giving it to me?"

"Well, only a little." She held it out. "If this doesn't help you get Emily's sister in the sack—" She trailed off as she noticed Athrun shift his weight awkwardly, and that evil grin on her face managed to get a little more evil. "Oh, you didn't."

"Um—"

"You devil!" squealed Roxy, and she smacked him on the shoulder triumphantly. "So you finally did the deed! How was it, player?"

"Err, we didn't actually—" He stopped and tried not to think about how red his face was turning. "We're, uh, waiting until we can be nice and far away from—uh, from Shinn and Rau and Emily."

Roxy blinked. "Why would you—oh," understanding dawned, "_oh_, yes, that would be weird."

"Very weird."

"Well anyways," Roxy clapped a hand on his shoulder, "thank God you two are finally together. That should bring the sexual tension around here down a few notches."

Athrun frowned. "That's what _everyone_ is saying."

"Yeah, well, you two have been making googly eyes at each other long enough." She swung around and stashed her bottle of absinthe back in the cabinet. "Besides," she went on, "now you're a little more like an actual human being. How does _that_ feel?"

"Different," Athrun said after a moment's thought, not particularly liking where she seemed to be going with this.

Roxy laughed and led him back outside. "There may be hope for you yet."

—

_Kids these days._

Meyrin Hawke found it rather odd to find that thought running through her head, as she watched Trojan and Lily pore over the _Minerva_'s mapping console and its wire-grid display of the northeastern coast of Brazil. It was moments like these that made her forget she was only nineteen herself—but most nineteen year olds didn't command warships and stare down grizzled enemy officers three times her age.

Either way, it was a little cute.

"I would send you if I could," Meyrin spoke up, catching their attention, "but we still need mobile suits to protect the ship." She smiled reassuringly. "Shinn and Stella will punch open a path from Belém. It's what they do."

Lily looked decidedly unconvinced and Trojan shrugged indifferently. Meyrin turned the chair back towards the bridge windows and sat back with a heavy sigh and a heavier heart.

Her thoughts turned towards the Amazon, towards the great muddy river where Emily and Rau were presumably on their way to Belém. And yet that would be a hectic battle. Alliance units converging on Belém, a ZAFT unit to the south charging up the coast, and nobody knew where the _Aristotle_ was hiding. And Ed the Ripper's units heading down the river, with Enrique's troops ready to strike...Belém would be a mess when this was all done.

And amid that all, she fixed her thoughts on the masked phantasm of Rau Le Creuset. He had always been an enigma, but the mask had served to simply add to his mystique in ZAFT. He had taken command after Chairman Dullindal's death at Solomon's Sword.

Shinn's words rang in her mind. But a ZAFT soldier, doing what any loyal ZAFT soldier would do—and yet, _he_ started the Junius War? The same war that wiped out the Coordinators?

Meyrin frowned and turned the thought over.

—

**River barge **_**Rio Purus**_**, Amazon River, Brazil, South America**

The _Rio Purus_ turned lazily through the murky waters, changing its direction south to follow the bends of the river and its adjoining canals. To continue north would take them to Macapá, some three hundred kilometers north of their intended destination. This little sojourn would have to end in Belém.

Leaning tiredly against the pilothouse and getting thoroughly sick of rivers, Emily stared out wearily towards the waters—until Jane Houston swung out of one of the lower hatches.

"Might wanna get outta sight," she said, and pulled Emily inside. A moment later, the river churned as another missile boat sped by, and Emily watched it go with a frown.

"There sure have been a lot of those."

"We're getting close to Belém." Jane ducked outside, looked around, and flashed a thumbs-up. "Though they've heightened patrols anyways in the last few weeks." She glanced over at Emily and frowned. "What's wrong?"

"N-Nothing," Emily stammered, "I'm just, um, just tired."

Jane arched an eyebrow skeptically. "Well, you'd better get some rest. The fighting at Belém will be pretty intense."

"I know."

The White Whale turned and headed for the camion where her Forbidden Blue slept. Emily watched her go. She knew the story: the White Whale, the Alliance's amphibious mobile suit combat expert, sent to destroy the AWOL Edward Harrelson but ended up joining him instead once she understood—or was made to understand—why he had left. She had thrown away a nice promotion for love and justice. Ed's fighters loved her, for that and for her cheerful demeanor.

Emily looked back towards the pilothouse. What would Rau say to that?

—

"Say that again, Enrique," ordered Ed, arms crossed, with an impassive Rau Le Creuset at his side.

Enrique nervously mopped back his tangled hair. "We caught sight of a ZAFT squadron coming up the coast," he said, "and projections of their course have them coming straight to Belém. The _Minerva_ has stopped to the north of the city, between here and Macapá. And there's the Alliance reinforcing the base, they must be on to us, and—" He cut himself off and shook his head. "Ed, I don't know if we can do this."

"Come on," scoffed Ed. "I'm Ed the Ripper. The hero of South America. I'll find a way."

"But four ZAFT warships and the full force of an Alliance combat unit!" sputtered Enrique. "Twelve mobile suits aren't gonna make that much difference!"

"The Angel of Death pilots no ordinary mobile suit," Rau interjected. "She will do her job, of that you can be certain."

"We can use this to our advantage," added Ed. "Think about it. Alliance units all lined up to deal with us, and they get attacked by ZAFT? All we need to do is punch open a path through the chaos." He frowned. "But Belém is gonna suffer for it..."

"That's my worry," Enrique answered. "We'll destroy the city in the crossfire."

"Not if you're careful," Ed replied, "and not if you use the enemy's fighting to your advantage." He slapped his knee as he stood up. "You're a professional, Enrique. You know what to do. Those ZAFT goons probably have no idea what they're getting into."

Enrique looked skeptical. "If you say so. We'll be waiting."

The screen went dark and Ed stood back with a heavy sigh. "Jesus, ZAFT too...I never thought Belém was that fucking important." He glanced over at Rau. "And since this is ZAFT we're talking about, for all I know they're going to demolish the city on purpose."

"Of course they will," answered Rau. "I understand this plan. They wish to cripple the Alliance's economy and diminish its strengths against ZAFT. It simply calls for massive civilian death."

Ed glowered down the river, towards the city over the horizon. "Well, they'll have to go through us first."

Rau smiled back. "Of course."

—

**Belém Air Base, Belém, Brazil, South America**

Lieutenant Commander James Liberman leapt to his feet in the Belém base control room, eyes wide at the strategic map.

"That can't be right," Liberman growled. "Where the hell did _they_ come from? How did they get this far without being attacked? What the hell were they doing all the way down the coast?"

At his side, Rena Imelia glanced up at the map with disdain. The Resistance's troops in Belém, plus Ed the Ripper's barges on the river, and now the sighting of four ZAFT warships closing in from the south. "Well, commander," she said, "it looks like you'll get that city-leveling battle you wanted."

"Thank you for reminding me, _lieutenant,_" Liberman snapped back.

Rena frowned distastefully and looked at the map again, fixing her attention on the four river barges. Ed the Ripper was on one of those barges with his crimson and gold Sword Calamity. The machine and the man that had bested her here, once before, cruising into her grasp once again. The man for which she had repeatedly turned down promotions, so that she might get another assignment like this.

But the real target...that was the _other_ Gundam running around with Ed the Ripper these days.

The Angel of Death. Emily von Oldendorf. The intel dossier was already committed to memory and the Testament was as responsive and fast as it would ever be. This ZAFT force was a new dimension that scrambled Liberman's calculations, but Rena's goal remained the same.

_Ed the Ripper and the Angel of Death,_ she thought venomously. _A little whirlpool of killing._

—

**May 14th, CE 77 - ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"Things will be hectic," Nathaniel said grimly on the screen as Alec Ladd closed the seals of his helmet in the Proto Abyss's cockpit. "Resistance units in the city are starting to get active. That may make your job easier or harder, depending on what the Resistance does."

"What they always do, I guess," Ladd grunted. "Shoot at _us_."

"Well, you can do something about that," Nathaniel replied. "Destroy the base and whatever military units you encounter. Do not target the city or the civilians. Be the bigger man, Ladd."

Ladd arched an eyebrow. "That's in direct violation of our orders, sir."

"I don't care."

"Camwell will."

"He is not in command." Nathaniel fixed Ladd with a stony look. "We're not going to be barbarians, commander. I will hold my fire on the city and restrict it to the base. I expect you to do the same, on your honor as a soldier of ZAFT."

Ladd smiled back and saluted. "Nothing's more sacred, sir. Proto Abyss, Alec Ladd, heading out!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Eckhart**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The hangar doors swung open with a crash and the cockpit screens of the Destiny Impulse came to life, the magenta Phase Shift armor following suit. Closing the visor of his ZAFT Red flight suit's helmet, Mare Stroud sat back and savored the hum of the Destiny Impulse's engines. Measly Martians had been only an appetizer. Here, on Earth, fighting the Naturals that had destroyed his homeland—this was more like it.

And somewhere on his way was _that_ man.

Mare's blood boiled in his veins. Shinn Asuka. The smart-assed little kid who had taken from him the honor of leading ZAFT's forces into battle in their finest achievement to date, the nimble and renewable Impulse. Shinn Asuka, the traitor who had thrown away their nation for some Extended whore. Shinn Asuka, the man who had stood in the spotlight, made the Impulse, _his_ Impulse, famous—not as a symbol of ZAFT but as a symbol of treachery against ZAFT. Shinn Asuka, the walking sin against the Coordinators.

Shinn Asuka, on his way on shimmering wings of light, speeding south from the _Minerva_'s position south of Macapá.

Mare turned his burning eyes towards the wide blue sky and rolling waves before him. The _Aristotle_ and _Bushnell_'s mobile suits were already in battle with the Alliance, and the Resistance was in the fight as well. Shinn Asuka and his little Extended were on their way.

He stepped forward with a crash. "Mare Stroud, Destiny Impulse, _launching!_"

The Destiny Impulse lunged out of the _Eckhart_'s hangar, and the beam wings came to life with a flash.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"Here we go," sighed Abbey as she glanced up at the tactical map. "Enrique jumped the gun."

"I don't blame him," Meyrin said. "Not with all this firepower bearing down on him." She glanced over at Burt. "Keep me posted on enemy numbers. If they fall far enough, we will intervene and open up a path for our mobile suits ourselves. Chen, charge the weapons, except the Tannhäuser."

She looked back at the map. Alliance and Resistance units duking it out in the city's eastern outskirts; Alliance and ZAFT troops in battle on the northern edges; both fronts slowly grinding backward into the city center. Belém would be destroyed.

Unless, of course, Emily had anything to say about it...

—

**River barge **_**Rio Purus**_**, outside Belém, Brazil, South America**

The sound of explosions had the whole crew out on deck, looking with amazement towards Belém and the towers of smoke already rising from the city.

"Goddammit, Enrique, too soon!" Ed shouted. "We were supposed to attack as we passed the port!"

"Too late for that now," snapped Jane, "let's get going before anyone notices us. I'll lead the attack on the port myself."

Ed ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Then I'll go into the city and help Enrique's men." He turned. "Emily, Rau, you force your way through, do as much damage as you can, and get the fuck out of here. Been a pleasure, but this is where you get off." He extended his hand towards Rau for a quick handshake, then towards Emily for a hesitant one. "I'm pulling for you."

"Th-Thank you," Emily stammered.

"Let's go," Rau said, and nudged her towards the Eclipse, "before the barges are attacked."

Emily cast one more glance back towards Belém and sprinted for her mobile suit.

—

To be continued...


	25. Phase 25: With Good Intentions

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 25 - With Good Intentions

—

**May 14th, CE 77 - Belém, Brazil, South America**

Panicking soldiers were an ugly sight, and before the imposing eyes of Bradley Kenneth, his men were beginning to panic. They would have to stop that.

He glared up at the tactical map in the Belém base's control room. Resistance units in the east and now the ones that they were going to trap from the south, and ZAFT units from the north. He had thrown his base's entire complement into action to stem the tide. It would have to hold—but not forever.

He glanced over at the auxiliary screen. "An hour, you say, Commodore Kaczynski?"

On the screen, the gruff naval officer nodded solemnly. "At flank speed, with the boats submerged. They'll take the first attack. The surface ships of my squadron will sweep in from the east. All we need you to do is hold out long enough for us to get into position."

Kenneth smirked. "Tall order there."

"I can't do anything more than that for you, general."

"I understand," answered Kenneth, "one hour." He smiled tightly. "We'll be expecting you."

Kaczynski smiled back. "Hopefully you'll be the only ones."

—

The Proto Abyss sliced through the murky waters of the Atlantic Ocean as they met the mighty Amazon, flanked by a squadron of ASH mobile suits, all of them in mobile armor mode. Alec Ladd scanned the surface and the dark depths, searching for underwater defenses. His part of the plan should have been simple—but it never was.

Alec yanked back the controls on instinct as the water before him churned and a wave of phonon maser blasts lanced out of the deep. "All units, surface and land!" he barked, and the Proto Abyss pitched upwards. The water burst upwards as the green mobile suit lunged out of the river and went crashing onto land, followed by its ASH escorts—and then the Proto Abyss rocked under the explosive power of a bazooka round to one of its shoulder shells.

"An ambush, huh," grunted Alec as he whirled around to face the attacker—

Instead, he flung up the Proto Abyss's lance to deflect the three prongs of a trident aimed at his mobile suit's cockpit. He followed the weapon's shaft up to its owner, and into the two eyes of a Gundam.

Alec Ladd smirked. "Well isn't that a treat," he chuckled. "I thought I'd be fighting our good friend the traitor again...not you."

On the other side, inside the Forbidden Blue, Jane Houston tightened her fists around the controls and smirked back. "Nope. You're stuck with me." The Forbidden Blue's eyes flashed to life and the Gundam flung the Proto Abyss back with its trident. "And as you'll see," the Forbidden Blue's Geschmeidig Panzer armor slid into place over the Gundam's head and the ASHes' beams went flying in all directions, "I'm no lightweight either!"

The air filled with machinegun rounds and beam blasts as three mobile suits burst out of hiding in the city and opened fire on the ASHes. Alec staggered back under the Forbidden Blue's relentless attacks, but a moment later he slammed the Proto Abyss's feet down and swung back with a punishing lance blow that stopped its opponent's trident cold.

"I was hoping to close some unfinished business with Shinn Asuka," he laughed, "but the White Whale is a nice consolation prize!"

The Proto Abyss's eyes lit up and the Gundam surged forward with a crash.

—

Ed the Ripper sat back with an even sigh in the cockpit of the humming Sword Calamity, his mobile suits stomping into the city around him. Perhaps all this chaos would be useful. But his part was done—and now he had a different task to accomplish in the streets of Belém.

And, as something came bursting through a nearby wall, Ed the Ripper steeled himself for that very task.

The Buster Windam charged forward with a punishing railgun blast that scattered shrapnel everywhere, driving back the Sword Calamity. Ed grunted as the red Gundam steadied itself on its heels and then sprang forward, swords drawn, and brought them down with a crash. The Buster Windam jerked back, barely missing the blades, and leveled off its beam cannon to fire; Ed ducked below the blast, then lunged forward again, and only a timely swing from a hastily-drawn beam saber saved the Buster Windam from destruction.

Sparks rained down as Ed keyed open the comm and fixed his foe with as chilling a look as he could manage. "Would've been a clever trap if not for ZAFT."

Dana Barrak scowled back, and charged forward to drive the Sword Calamity back on its heels. It unloaded a salvo of missiles from its legs that sent the Sword Calamity reeling—and then the Buster Windam blasted through the smoke and forced Ed back into a swordfight.

"But speaking of traps," Ed continued through gritted teeth, and the Sword Calamity fired off a blast from its Scylla cannon, "I was hoping we could have a nice little chat about a certain operation of yours," the Sword Calamity rattled from a missile hit, "the other day!"

The Buster Windam ground to a halt as the Sword Calamity charged, and the blades met with a shower of sparks.

"You can think whatever you want," Dana hissed. "It's not my concern."

"Not your concern, huh?" shot back Ed. The Sword Calamity advanced with a punishing series of sword blows. "A thousand people dead, and it's 'not your concern,' huh?" The Buster Windam stabbed forward; Ed ducked beneath the blow, but the Buster Windam darted aside to dodge his counterattack. He whipped around and crouched below a beam cannon blast. "'cuz it sure as hell is _my_ concern!"

"Of course it is, Mr. Hero," snarled Dana. Her mobile suit jinked to its right to dodge another Scylla blast and closed in with a beam cannon salvo. "But that's only because you _are_ Mr. Hero." The Buster Windam closed in for another swordfight, and Ed scanned his opponent for an opening as a knot of unease began to grow in the pit of his stomach. "To these people you can do no wrong. You have no fear. Everything goes as planned." She narrowed her eyes as the Buster Windam stormed in. "Isn't that right, _Kirisaki?_"

—

"This may fall to our advantage," Rau explained as the CGUE Assault pulled itself to its feet, silver and white armor nearly gleaming in the sun. "Between ZAFT and the Resistance forces, the Alliance base will be too distracted to stop us from getting through."

The Gundam Eclipse came to life with a blaze of light from its eyes, dark body towering into the bright blue sky. In the cockpit, Emily cracked her knuckles and readied herself for a fight. "We did promise to help them."

Rau grinned back. "I didn't say we wouldn't—"

Emily's eyes snapped up towards the sky, and the CGUE and Eclipse both lunged to the sides as a salvo of beams went sizzling by over the barge and into the water. Emily scanned the sky for a sign of their attacker, only for another beam barrage to send her scrambling for distance behind her beam shield.

"That presence," Rau breathed, just before the CGUE took a storm of beam blasts to its shoulder shields. "No doubt about it. That's her."

"That's who?"

The sky split open with the teeth-rattling roar of engines and yet another storm of beams came down around the two mobile suits. Emily drew her beam sword with a flash and tensed as a slash of red lit up in the sky, and up ahead the form of a mobile suit came shrieking out of the heavens.

"Her. The Sakura Burst. Rena Imelia."

Emily cringed. "Is this someone I should know?"

"An Alliance ace pilot with the genetic composition of a Natural but the reflexes and cognition of a Coordinator," Rau explained. "She trained some of the Alliance's best pilots, including Harrelson and Houston." He glanced down towards the river. "I will cover the barges as they escape. You will need to hold off Imelia."

The CGUE plunged down towards the riverbank, and Emily turned her eyes back towards the charging red mobile suit with a Gundam's face. It sprouted a long pointed sword blade from the oversized weapon on its right arm, and the blades met with a crash that went rattling up into Emily's brain—and a woman with black hair and a stoic look appeared on the auxiliary screen.

"I was expecting to encounter Ed the Ripper here," said Rena Imelia with a scowl, "but I suppose you'll have to do in his stead, Angel of Death."

Emily frowned. "Hello to you too."

The Divine Testament Gundam surged forward with a blast of exhaust from its thrusters. "But I wonder," Rena continued, as the Testament went back on the attack, "how it could be that so many heroes are gathered here." The Eclipse rocked as the Testament brought down its sword again. "Isn't that strange?" The Testament charged forward—and then a claw opened up on the end of its Trikeros Kai shield, Rena brought it down with a crash on the Eclipse's left arm, and she flung the black Gundam down towards the river. Emily yelped in surprise as she struggled to regain control—just as the Testament charged in again. The Eclipse fired its thrusters to barely escape and skim over the water's surface, pursued by a wave of beam fire from the Testament.

"Natural with a Coordinator's reflexes, huh," grunted Emily; she slammed on the brakes and lunged into the Testament's face with a sword blow that was barely deflected by the red Gundam's own blade.

"So many heroes running around," Rena growled. The Testament's eyes lit up, it hurled the Eclipse back, and charged forward on the attack with a ruthless series of sword swings. "But every hero has a story!" The Testament lunged forward, blade flashing in the sun, and slammed it down against the Eclipse's blade to drive it back. "_So let's hear yours!_"

Emily ground her teeth in frustration as her Gundam went reeling. "You sure are talkative!" She slammed on the brakes, somersaulted over the charging Testament, and whipped around to face her crimson foe. "I never did like that in my enemies!"

The Eclipse's beam wings came to life with a brilliant flash across the cloudless blue sky, and Rena licked her lips in anticipation.

"That's right, Angel of Death," she hissed, "let's get serious."

—

Two pulsing red beams came streaking out of the heavens, and inside the Destiny Gundam, Shinn Asuka jammed the controls to the side. The Gaia at his side jerked away as well and the blasts went flashing between them—and Shinn narrowed his eyes at the glint of metal in the sky, roaring down for battle.

"A Destiny unit?" he started. "No, that's—Stella, I'll handle this one. Go ahead and find Emily."

Stella frowned. "But it looks like the Destiny," she protested.

"Yeah, but it isn't _the_ Destiny."

Stella looked decidedly unconvinced, but the Gaia spiraled down towards the water and accelerated towards the coast. Shinn looked back up with a grimace and then dodged another wave of beam fire—and with a crash, two whirling beam boomerangs pounded against his beam shield. The weapons arced their way back towards their owner—

"Run out of places to hide, have you?"

The voice shot through the Destiny's cockpit and Shinn instinctively drew the Arondight and swung upward to deflect the downward blows of two long Excalibur anti-ship swords.

"Finally I've found you!" the voice roared. "Now we can settle this score for good!" The swords came crashing down again. "And you can face justice for your crimes!" A face appeared on the auxiliary screen—a face that sent a bolt of recollection up Shinn's spine.

"Hi Mare," Shinn grunted. "I see you're still an asshole."

The purple and white Destiny Impulse flung its foe away with its two blazing Excalibur swords, and in the cockpit, Mare Stroud fixed his famous foe with a hateful glare. "And I see _you're_ still the same mouthy little shit you were on Armory 1, eh?" The Impulse charged and went back on the attack with another relentless series of sword blows. "I'll teach you some respect!"

Exhaust flying, the Impulse roared forward again, swords raised. Shinn tensed and ducked beneath the blows, rocketing backward; then he slammed on the brakes and rushed forward with an overhead hack towards the Impulse's torso. The purple mobile suit hurled its foe back and put it on the defensive with another salvo of red beam blasts. Mare came back down with a scream and a whirlwind of sword strokes, and Shinn ground his teeth as the blows rattled the Destiny.

"Just as I predicted," Mare cried, "once I get my hands on the Impulse, I'm unstoppable!" The Impulse roared in close again. "But nobody else ever understood that, so they gave _you_ the Impulse!" Shinn jammed back the controls to avoid a sweeping attack. "And look what _you_ did with it! You turned it into a symbol of treachery!" The Impulse pummeled the Destiny with beam blasts. "Tell me why, Asuka! _Tell me why!_"

"That would be a waste of breath," Shinn shot back. The Impulse charged with a winnowing horizontal sword slice; Shinn ducked beneath the blow, then whirled around with his long-range cannon extended, but the Impulse ducked around his shot with a flurry of afterimages and returned the fire twofold. "Someone like you would never understand, Mare."

"No, I guess I wouldn't!" screamed Mare, and the Impulse went back on the assault. "There's nothing you can say to excuse treason against your own people, Shinn!" The Destiny lunged below the Impulse's finishing stab and darted up from behind with a lethal blow of its own, but the Impulse whipped around, sword in hand, to deflect the attack and followed up with a horizontal slash from its other sword that nearly caught the Destiny's head. "So I will end this _right here!_"

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Siegfried**_**-class carrier plane **_**Volturno**_

The _Volturno_ lurched into the air amid a storm of weapons fire and slowly began to ascend. On the bridge, James Liberman sat back with a sigh in the command chair and cast a tired glance down towards the battlefield. Kenneth had reinforcements from the regular forces on the way—but in the meantime, the Phantom Pain had work to do and a battlefield to cleanse.

"Jet Windam squadron falling into formation," the _Volturno_'s captain reported. "We'll begin the first run once they're ready to escort us. Target is Resistance lines within the city."

Liberman smiled thinly as he draped one leg over the other. "They are skilled at using the buildings for cover and ambushes. So let's level the playing field." The _Volturno_ rumbled as it banked towards the city, the black Jet Windams falling into position on its flanks.

The captain nodded grimly and turned towards his crew. "Bomb crews, stand by. Prepare incendiaries for a full spread. We won't leave a thing standing."

The _Volturno_ turned inexorably towards the city, and Liberman smirked down at it. Time to smoke out the rats.

—

**Belém, Brazil, South America**

A thundering explosion tore through the streets of Belém and sent the two combatants flying to the side. Inside the Sword Calamity, Ed slammed down the mobile suit's feet and ground to a halt in an intersection. He turned his eyes towards the source of the blast—and the thick column of smoke rising up from a sheet of flame and wrecked buildings, beneath the wings of a _Siegfried_ carrier plane.

"What the hell is this?" he shouted, and then flung the Sword Calamity back again as another bomb came tumbling down.

On the other end of the street, Dana glowered up at the _Volturno_. "Liberman, what the hell do you think you're doing?" she snapped. "We have things under control!"

"I very much doubt that," Liberman sneered, "and at any rate, I will not pass up this opportunity to destroy such a pesky nest for these Resistance rats. General Kenneth could not get the job done, but only the Phantom Pain has the will to take those steps that are necessary. Now get out of the way."

Ed stored forward with a shout and brought down his swords onto the Buster Windam's beam saber, driving the green mobile suit back. "Why am I not surprised?" he roared, and slammed the Buster Windam away with another sword blow. "To see you doing this again!"

"That's the Phantom Pain doing this!" Dana shot back. The Buster Windam darted away from another sword stroke and fired back with a railgun burst that sent the Sword Calamity reeling.

"Well, easy mistake to make!" snarled Ed. The Buster Windam leveled off its beam cannon for a lethal blow; the Sword Calamity whirled aside and fired one of its anchors forward, lodging it in the crumbling superstructure of a damaged building. The red mobile suit gave the ruins a hard yank and brought them tumbling down; the Buster Windam jetted to the side, around the falling debris, only to throw up its saber and deflect another overhead sword attack.

"There's a difference between me and the Phantom Pain," Dana shouted, as the sparks and wreckage rained down around the two mobile suits. "I did what I did out of fear; they do it out of cruelty."

Ed arched an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to believe that?"

"Whether or not you believe it doesn't matter. The truth is the truth." The Buster Windam surged forward, throwing back its crimson adversary, and unleashed a round of missiles that forced the Sword Calamity to backflip over the projectiles and come crashing back down—only to back into another swordfight with the Buster Windam. "That's right, I'll admit it! You trapped me and threw that Midnight at me, and what was I supposed to do? Just accept being slaughtered like cattle?" The Sword Calamity shook under another railgun blast. "But that's not what's going on here, is it?"

"Then what the hell are you getting in my way for?" Ed screamed back.

"Because," answered Dana, "you're still my enemy!"

The Buster Windam leveled off its saber and charged.

—

Jane Houston groaned in frustration as the Proto Abyss's shoulder cannon shells slammed into her humming Forbidden Blue. The Geschmeidig Panzer could deflect beams perfectly fine, but solid projectiles...

"The Earth Alliance's White Whale is as formidable a foe as I've heard!" cackled Alec Ladd as his Proto Abyss lunged in with an upturned lance and brought the blade down hard against the Forbidden Blue's trident. Jane slammed back one heel into the ground, then launched herself forward and sent the Proto Abyss staggering back. She followed with a trident stab towards the enemy mobile suit's cockpit, but the Proto Abyss jammed its lance into the way and parried the blow, then brought its lance back down again—only for the Forbidden Blue to deploy one of its claws to catch the blade in midair.

"I'm no Alliance pilot," Jane shot back.

Alec broke into a grin. "Even better. I'd hate to think I'm only fighting some genocidal asshole." He threw a switch on his cockpit console. "Jorgen, continue with the mission. Leave me to fight the White Whale." He licked his lips with anticipation. "I haven't had a nice clean fight for a long time."

Jane clenched her fists around the Forbidden Blue's controls, listening as her own troops moved off to chase the ZAFT units. The Proto Abyss lunged forward with a powerful overhead swing and knocked the Forbidden Blue back. The green Gundam planted its feet and fired off a pulsing Callidus blast; Jane threw her mobile suit to the right, letting the blast sizzle by, and then whipped around and swung out the trident horizontally, towards the Proto Abyss's waist. Ladd countered the blow with a swing from his trident and then took a step back, leveling off the Proto Abyss's beam cannons, and opened fire—

Instead of doing damage, the blasts landed against the Forbidden Blue's Geschmeidig Panzer armor and went flying in all directions—and Jane took the opportunity to storm forward, claws extended, and slam head-on into the Proto Abyss.

"Well done!" Ladd shouted, and fired the thrusters to fling the Forbidden Blue off. He skidded to a halt in the dust and hefted his lance. "Not disappointing, White Whale! Not disappointing in the least!" The Proto Abyss's eyes flashed and the mobile suit reared back. "But you'll have to do better than _that!_"

With a roar of its engines, the Proto Abyss vaulted into the air and showered the area with beam blasts. Jane hissed a curse and flung her Gundam to the ground, armor active and deflecting beams back into the sky. The Proto Abyss fired forward with a punishing barrage of cannon fire that sent the Forbidden Blue stumbling back—just in time for the green Gundam to plow through the smoke with its lance held high. Jane stabbed forward with the trident to catch the Proto Abyss's lance and leave the two mobile suits locked together, sparks raining down on them.

"Whatever you're doing here, I won't let you hurt the people of Belém," Jane snarled.

Alec grinned back. "That's the way. Be the honorable one." The Proto Abyss hurled the Forbidden Blue back with its lance and charged again.

—

Sparks rained down on the Gundam Eclipse's jet-black armor as the Eclipse and Testament met in a duel of blades. The Testament whirled around under the Eclipse's horizontal beam sword slice, and then rushed up again, its backpack shifting shape into a giant claw. Emily yanked back on the controls, but too late; the Testament's Divine Striker pack slammed down onto the Eclipse's left arm, and with a shout, Rena sent the black mobile suit tumbling out of the sky.

"And now the story ends!" she screamed, and the red Gundam leveled off its guns—

The Eclipse rocketed up into the sky amid a blaze of afterimages. Rena snapped her eyes up, only to shrink back as the Angel of Death put the sun to her back—and then the Testament rocked as the Eclipse came down again with a devastating overhead blow against the red mobile suit's Trikeros Kai shield. Rena pulled away with a furious sword swipe, but the Eclipse kept coming with a chain of sword swings.

"I don't have time for you!" Emily snapped, and the Testament rattled from a punishing attack. "_Get out of my way!_"

"There's only one way you'll get _me_ out of your hair," Rena shot back; the Testament backflipped over another slice, then came back down with its own bone-jarring strike and charged forward on the assault. The Eclipse wove its way through a curtain of beam fire, but the Testament was there to slam the claw on its Trikeros Kai onto the Eclipse's arm, then fling the black mobile suit aside. "And so far, you're a long way from it!"

—

Sword met sword as the Destiny Impulse and Destiny Gundam dueled across the sky, wings of light sending afterimages dancing among the clouds. The Destiny whipped around, sword blazing, and fired off a blast from its long-range cannon, only to catch the Impulse's afterimages. The purple and white mobile suit darted amid the clouds and then rushed in, swords held high—but the Destiny jammed its sword upward to spoil the blows.

"Just as I thought," sneered Shinn, "you're still not on my level."

Mare snarled in fury and the Impulse flung the Destiny back with sheer strength. The purple mobile suit went back on the attack with a wave of long-range cannon blasts that forced Shinn back on the defensive. "Never did put that ego of yours in check, did you!" he roared, and the Impulse roared after its foe. "I'll never understand why they gave _you_ the Impulse, you self-important little shit!"

The Destiny whirled around and slammed its sword up into the Impulse's two blades, stopping them cold. "Of course you won't," answered Shinn. "They didn't give me the Impulse because I'm nicer than you or something. They gave it to me because I'm _better_ than you."

"How dare you—!" Mare shrieked, and the Impulse surged forward again. "You cocky little—!"

"Now now, watch your temper." The Destiny ducked beneath the Impulse's vicious swipes and rocketed up behind its foe. Mare wheeled around to face Shinn—only for the Destiny to bring its sword down through the Impulse's left-hand Excalibur and send the blade spiraling away uselessly. Mare tossed aside the remains with a curse and ducked away from the Destiny's follow-up swing.

"You have a lot of gall, Shinn Asuka, acting like you're _better_ than me!" Mare cried, and the Impulse rained sword blows down onto the Destiny's blade. "As though _I'm_ the one who betrayed my people to Blue Cosmos! As though _I'm_ the one who abandoned them in their hour of need, for some Natural whore and a bunch of traitors!"

The Destiny flung itself back to avoid the Impulse's sword, then roared forward again and slammed it aside with its shoulder. "I already told you, you wouldn't understand," Shinn answered, "so I'll have to speak to you in the only language you _do_ understand!"

—

Rau Le Creuset let out a laugh as the Windams up ahead scattered under a ruthless hail of machinegun bullets. The CGUE Assault stormed forward; one of the Windams lunged out from behind its cover and opened fire with its beam rifle, only for the blasts to land harmlessly against the CGUE's massive white shoulder shields. Rau plunged ahead, ducked under the next salvo, and charged up again to plant a beam saber through the Windam's cockpit. And as the white and blue mobile suit sparked ominously, he flung its corpse aside and charged down the street, braving more fire from the Windams.

"And Emily is still fighting Imelia," he breathed, and paused to throw the CGUE behind a building as the Windams opened fire again. "Perfect. I've accomplished all that I can here anyway."

The CGUE flung itself out from behind cover and let loose a wave of machinegun fire at the Windam team's flanks. One of them toppled backwards as a bullet-riddled heap of metal; the remaining two backed away behind their shields as the CGUE strafed to the right, further down the street.

"Commander Harrelson," he said into the comm, "we're nearing our limit. How are things on your end?"

The face of Edward Harrelson vanished momentarily behind a wall of static. "Could be better. The Phantom Pain is bombing Belém. Emily's dealing with Imelia, and I don't really have the troops to spare."

Rau glanced around the battlefield, just in time to notice his foes in the Windams being reinforced, and decided that honesty was the best policy. "I do not have a clear shot either. Someone else will have to deal with the bombers."

"Well, shit," sighed Ed, and something crashed on his end and static flashed across the image again. "Then we're going to plan B. Hope for a miracle."

"I don't believe in miracles," Rau said. "I will do what I can. CGUE, out."

The silver ZAFT mobile suit rocked under a hail of beam rifle fire, but Rau only smirked at the nervous pilots before him. It was all such a delicate game—but no one played it like he did.

—

The ground shook as the Gaia Gundam landed hard on its feet amid the trees—and there, emerging from the jungle, came the four Wild Daggers that had pursued Stella ever since landfall. At this rate, she wouldn't find Emily and Rau—and _that_ was no good.

The Wild Daggers charged forward. Stella backflipped away and transformed the Gaia into its quadruped mode in midair. She landed with a crash, then darted aside as one of the Daggers shredded the ground around her with a Gatling burst. The second Dagger galloped in with its beam sabers ignited; Stella jinked to the side and lit up her own beam blades, and with a crash, the beams slammed together and showered the two mobile suits in sparks. Stella whirled around and then vaulted into the air over a cannon blast from a third Wild Dagger.

"Just a bunch of copies," she snarled, and wheeled around the Gaia for another attack. The first Wild Dagger rushed in close; Stella reared back on the Gaia's hind legs, over the Dagger's blade, and then jumped backward to avoid a Gatling burst from the second Dagger. The third opened fire again with its railgun; and then the fourth was there, and with a flash, it transformed to its mobile suit mode with a pair of towering anti-ship swords in hand. The first rushed in from behind, beam sabers blazing—

With a start, the Gaia darted into the air off one foot, transformed, and speared the first Dagger on a beam rifle shot. It landed with a crash, Stella tore the Gaia's saber out from its rack with her left hand, and with a blinding cloud of sparks, the Gaia's beam saber stopped the fourth Dagger's swords cold.

"I'm better at this than you," growled Stella—and as the Wild Dagger pressed forward, she flung it back with a beam saber swipe, jumped back into the air, transformed, and let fly a withering burst of beam cannon blasts. "Just watch!"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Meyrin Hawke narrowed her eyes at the tactical map on the _Minerva_'s bridge, where the Alliance line held fast against the ZAFT onslaught and the Resistance's persistent hammering. There was a reason for _that_, at least—the _Siegfried_ looming over the city, blasting strategic points into oblivion.

"Got the IFF signal for the Eclipse," Roxy spoke up at the comm console. "Looks like she's busy, though. Want me to give her a ring?"

Meyrin leaned forward. "Not yet. Malik, take us in, flank speed. Chen, prepare the weapons, Tannhäuser included. We're going to break open a hole in those lines ourselves and get our pilots out."

Abbey frowned. "Enrique and Ed will want to know."

"They're big boys. They can tell an opportunity when they see one. Roxy, keep Lily and Trojan on standby. We'll end this thing ourselves."

—

**ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Eckhart**_

The reports streaming in onto the _Eckhart_'s bridge were completely infuriating. Willard twitched angrily as the latest one scrolled by on his screen. Another squad destroyed—like cattle, run to a slaughter in a crossfire in the streets.

"Move the _Bushnell_ closer to the city," he ordered, "and prepare for a missile bombardment. I am losing my patience with this."

The _Eckhart_'s captain blinked in surprise. "Sir—"

"Don't question me," Willard snapped. "Our mission is to render this city economically useless and clear the way down the Amazon. Nothing would be better for that than wiping out the entire city."

The captain glanced out the bridge windows, towards the towers of smoke rising from Belém. "Commander, is it necessary to kill that many civilians? They aren't really doing anything to threaten us. All we need to do is destroy the port."

Willard rose from his seat and fixed the captain with a blood-chilling glare. "We will do our duty," he shot back. "Transmit my orders to the _Bushnell_. I want this city leveled."

The captain reluctantly turned towards the comm officer, and Willard returned his gaze to Belém and the arms of smoke and flame reaching up towards the heavens, ruing the weakness and pity that gnawed at his men's hearts. The marshal had told them they would need to be cold to carry out this plan, to secure their homeland, to secure their existences—and yet the fools still did not listen.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Siegfried**_**-class carrier plane **_**Volturno**_

Shuddering from the shockwave of another detonation down below, the _Volturno_ slowly banked around towards the flaming city. The line was holding so far, but any moment now the ZAFT forces could send a surge of reinforcements and overwhelm the beleaguered Alliance troops—and that would look awfully bad on James Liberman's service record.

He glanced over towards the port, where ZAFT and Resistance mobile suits were still in battle. The _Volturno_'s captain followed his gaze and shrugged. "It's not what we were expecting, to see them fighting against ZAFT too."

"Of course not," sneered Liberman. "Intel suggests that the Resistance's leadership has yet to decide on a policy towards ZAFT, so individual units are making their own decisions."

The captain frowned. "It seems to be benefiting us, so far."

"They're still Resistance," Liberman snarled. "Target them and destroy them, before the rats can multiply."

He sat back and watched as the _Volturno_ swept in for another attack.

—

**Belém, Brazil, South America**

Emily held her breath as she ducked beneath one sweeping sword blow from the Testament and then threw up her beam shield to deflect a wave of beam cannon blasts. The Testament charged in close and opened the claw on its Trikeros Kai—

"There!" she shouted, and the Eclipse rocketed forward with a crash and brought its beam sword up through the Trikeros Kai. Rena jammed back the controls as the Eclipse followed up with a backhand slash and abandoned the ruined weapon in favor of a beam saber.

"Very clever," she snarled, "but that's only the Trikeros!" The Testament charged forward for a frenetic swordfight with the Eclipse. "And I did not earn my reputation for nothing!"

Emily ground her teeth as the Eclipse frantically deflected and parried the Testament's saber blows. "I don't care about your reputation," she snarled; the Eclipse batted aside one of the Testament's blows and then slammed it hard in the chest with a knee. "I just want you _out of my way!_" The Testament reeled and Emily lined up for a finishing attack.

Rena flung the Testament back to dodge the Eclipse's final blow and showered the black Gundam with beam fire. "A worthy foe, you've been, Angel of Death," she cried, "but it's time to finish this!" The Testament charged, beam saber held high—

And then the sky filled with light as the Eclipse activated its Voiture Lumiere system, somersaulted over the charging Testament's head, whipped around, and fired a line from inside its left forearm directly into the Testament's Divine Striker. An instant later, a jolt of electricity shot into the device and blew it apart with a thunderous explosion. Rena screamed as her red mobile suit plummeted towards the earth—and then the Eclipse was there, sword held forward for a lethal stab—

Rena yanked the controls to the left just before the Eclipse made contact, sacrificing the Testament's entire left shoulder. A blaze of fire rushed up as Testament's left side exploded, showering Rena with shrapnel, and the wrecked mobile suit belched smoke and fire as it plunged into the jungle.

"W-Well done," she croaked through the pain, at the black mobile suit hovering above with its shining beam sword.

The Eclipse stared down impassively at its defeated foe, and then rocketed off into the battle.

—

"You're being more of a pain in the ass than I expected, Mare," grunted Shinn Asuka as the Destiny Gundam rattled under the relentless sword blows of the Destiny Impulse. Mare Stroud glowered back and sent the Destiny reeling with as hard a blow as he could muster.

"Did you expect me to just roll over and let you run around without facing justice?" he sneered, and the Impulse closed in again. Shinn rocketed to the side to avoid the Impulse's downward hack; Mare whipped around to pursue him with a blazing barrage of long-range cannon shots, and the Destiny danced through the blasts amid a cloud of afterimages. "Did you think none of your old comrades in arms would remember your treachery?"

"Of course not," Shinn snapped, "but some of them _got over it!_"

The Impulse pounded a wave of blasts against the Destiny's beam shield. "Get over it, huh?" The purple mobile suit closed in with a flurry of sword strokes. "_Get over it?_" The two Gundams met in a shower of sparks. "Who the hell do you think you are? Don't you realize what you cost us?" Mare's face burned with hatred; Shinn winced under the psychic pressure of his raw, churning fury. "The Requiem took everything from me! My friends, my home, my family! How dare you tell me to just _get over_ that! Don't you know what that's like?"

Shinn gritted his teeth as the Impulse drove him back. "You're asking me what it's like to lose your family," he snarled—and with a sudden surge of afterimages, the Destiny rammed its sword forward and stopped the Impulse's attack cold. "Of course I know that, you idiot. But look at what you've done with it. You're just an animal, acting purely on hatred and instinct. You got shit on by the world and you turned into a monster."

"And I suppose you didn't?" growled Mare.

"Well, I'm not the one committing genocide."

The Impulse surged forward with a roar from its thrusters. "_Don't question us!_" Mare roared, and the sword came down again with a crash. "If it weren't for you, we would have _never_ had to go this far!"

Shinn yanked back the controls to dodge the Impulse's next attack and rocketed up over its head, afterimages flying. "I'm glad you think I'm so special that I can singlehandedly lose an entire war for you all by myself," he shot back, "but we're not talking about a moral gray zone here, Mare! Evil is evil! If you won't understand that, then I'll just have to kill you and keep the world safe from you!" The Impulse showered the Destiny with beam blasts; Shinn wove his way through them and the two Gundams rattled as their swords met again. "I just hope Riika forgives me."

Mare blinked in surprise. "Riika? She's alive? Here?"

"That's right, Riika, and Courtney too," Shinn went on with a glare. "And they're with the Resistance. Not ZAFT. They won't join ZAFT, especially not now, with what you've done. Not every Coordinator is blinded by hatred."

But Mare was silent, eyes unfocused, as the sparks flew. Shinn flung the Impulse back and hefted his sword, testing his opponent's tumbling emotions. If there was a spark to be dragged out...

"It's not too late for you either, Mare," he added, even past the distaste he felt at the idea. "You know what ZAFT is doing is wrong, deep down. You know that loyalty is only as noble as what you're loyal to.

"Who would have thought," Mare muttered, and Shinn sighed quietly as he felt the anger gush back to the surface, "that we Coordinators had so many traitors running around!" The Impulse charged, sword held high. "I guess I'll have my work cut out for me, hunting you bastards down!"

Shinn only sighed as he dodged Mare's attacks and went back on the defensive, waiting for his opportunity.

—

The second Wild Dagger let fly with a vicious burst from its Gatling gun, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off the Gaia Gundam's jet-black armor. Stella scanned over her three remaining enemies, one with a Gatling gun, one with a railgun, and one with two anti-ship swords. The fourth Dagger hefted its two swords and charged; the Gaia darted aside, landed with a crash, and whipped around to shower the three mobile suits with beam fire.

The third Dagger lunged in from behind and leveled off its railgun; the fourth rushed forward from the front, swords held high; Stella saw her chance and bucked backward, knocking the third Dagger off its feet. The fourth one closed in—

With a crash of twisting metal, the Gaia lunged into the air and sawed the mobile suit in half with one of its beam blades. The bisected Wild Dagger crashed into the dirt and exploded, Stella landed with a crash, and the remaining two Daggers intensified their fire and pounded the Gundam's black Phase Shift armor.

"Only two of you," Stella grumbled, "and you can't hurt me with _those_ things."

The second Dagger lurched forward, Gatling gun still blazing; Stella hopped to the side, planted the Gaia's four feet in the dirt, and leveled off the beam cannons—

Instead, a wave of bullets lanced out from the jungle and ripped the second Dagger to shreds. The third turned its railgun towards the trees. Stella seized the opportunity to blow it apart with a beam cannon barrage, and then she backed away and turned her eyes towards the jungle herself—just in time to see a silver CGUE with hulking white armor stomp out of the wilderness.

"Ah, Stella Loussier," said Rau Le Creuset with a smirk. "Good to see a familiar face again."

"Rau!" Stella exclaimed. "Where's Emily?"

"She's off making her own fun," answered Rau, and the CGUE nodded towards the sky. "But I suggest we go find her and get going, before this battle gets anymore chaotic."

Stella nodded and transformed the Gaia back to its mobile suit mode, and with a blast of exhaust, the two mobile suits vaulted into the air and took off.

—

Dust and smoke filled the streets of Belém as the Buster Windam and Sword Calamity locked blades. The green Alliance mobile suit whipped around its crimson foe and unloaded a salvo of missiles into its back—but the red Gundam tore through the smoke with a sweeping horizontal sword slash and brought its blades down hard onto the Buster Windam's beam saber, driving it back.

"You know," snarled Ed, "this would all go better if you'd sit back for a while and let me go take care of your friends up there. I'd even come back and we can keep trying to kill each other. Promise."

Dana sneered back and fired off a railgun shot that sent the Sword Calamity diving for cover. "Don't play cute with me, _Kirisaki_. You're not going anywhere. You're going to _witness_ this."

The Sword Calamity rushed in close for another swordfight. "So you'll just sit here and make me watch the Phantom Pain bomb this city into rubble?" He rushed forward and fired off a Scylla blast that nearly took off the Buster Windam's head. "Is fighting me _that_ important to you?"

Thundering back with another railgun blast, the Buster Windam jetted to the side and poured a beam cannon shot into the ground at the Sword Calamity's feet. A wall of smoke and fire rose up in front of the red mobile suit and Dana darted around the flames, beam saber held high for the kill.

"As long as I've got you here—" she started—only for the red Gundam to burst out of the smoke and slam its swords up to stop the Buster Windam's beam saber cold.

"Is that all you are these days, Dana?" Ed screamed. "Just a killer?"

The Buster Windam jetted backward and unleashed its last salvo of missiles at the Sword Calamity. Ed vaulted into the air, preparing a Scylla blast—only for the Buster Windam to combine its cannons, take aim, and squeeze off a pulsing blast of its own. The Sword Calamity lunged back towards the ground—

...and instead, Dana's blast plowed through the _Volturno_, far up above, and the stricken carrier plane shuddered and died in a cloud of fire.

Ed turned disbelievingly towards Dana and watched the Buster Windam disconnect its cannons.

"Consider us even, Ed," she snarled—and the green mobile suit charged back on the attack.

—

**ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Eckhart**_

The _Eckhart_ shook as a near miss from a salvo of missiles detonated on the water's surface. Commander Willard gripped the armrests of his chair and glowered out over the water, where those miserable Resistance rats and Alliance Naturals were holding their own against the weight of his forces. It was inconceivable, intolerable; at this rate, they wouldn't have the forces to attack Macapá.

Willard balled his fists up scornfully as the _Eckhart_ rocked again. "Where are the _Tonegawa_ and _Morgan_? I want covering fire laid down at once."

He was answered by a flash of light to the ship's starboard—and then the _Morgan_ shuddered beneath a rising cloud of fire and slipped beneath the waves. Willard's eyes bulged in disbelief.

"What the—what the hell was that?"

"New heat signature detected!" one of the bridge crew cried. "Energy reading—it's the—!"

The world went white and Willard vanished with a scream as the _Minerva_'s Tannhäuser cannon tore its way through the _Eckhart_.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_

Nathaniel Hatias watched somberly as the great _Minerva_ spread its wings over the battlefield and blasted its way through the battlefield—and through Willard's task force. So they had run out of time—and this would be difficult to explain to Command.

"Captain, new contacts," the sonar officer spoke up urgently. "Five Alliance ships on the surface, three underwater. It looks like that squadron from Natal.'

Nathaniel frowned at the tactical map. "So they found their way back after all," he grunted. "Guess I shouldn't take that to be a surprise." He glanced over at Camwell. "I think we'd best retreat."

Camwell sneered up at the tactical map. "We were supposed to have the upper hand here."

"But now we don't."

The _Aristotle_ rumbled. "Torpedoes in the water; the _Bushnell_ is sinking, sir!" the sonar officer cried.

"And that tears it," Nathaniel finished. "Camwell, contact the survivors and tell them we're retreating fifty klicks north. We'll take aboard whoever's left and move out to sea. On the double."

As Camwell reluctantly got to work, Nathaniel turned back towards the tactical map and focused on the blinking icon that represented his elusive winged foe.

_Perhaps it's just as well,_ he thought bitterly, _that you're the one acting as my conscience._

—

**Belém, Brazil, South America**

The Proto Abyss landed with a crash on its heels and staggered back, before the gleaming blade of the Forbidden Blue. Alec Ladd grinned at his hulking foe and its outstretched trident, even as the order came in for him to retreat.

"I gotta say, White Whale, this was a pretty good substitute for my bout with the Traitor Asuka," he chuckled.

"Glad you're having fun," shot back Jane. The Forbidden Blue's eyes flashed and the Gundam lunged forward with a stab from its trident. The Proto Abyss parried the blow; Alec surged forward with a shout, knocked the Forbidden Blue back, and fired a round of cannon shells into the blue mobile suit's armor. Jane hacked apart the smoke with a curse—

...only to find the Proto Abyss transforming into its mobile armor mode and plunging into the river with a splash.

Jane glanced around the port, finding a handful of shot-up ZAFT mobile suits diving into the water themselves, and other ZAFT machines vaulting over the river towards the north—away from the Resistance, and the victorious Alliance.

"Retreating...?"

—

Shinn Asuka grunted in frustration as the Destiny Impulse parried another blow from the Destiny Gundam's sword. ZAFT was on the retreat, the Alliance and the Resistance were still duking it out in Belém—but Rau and the Eclipse had been located. There was no more reason to stay here—no more reason but the writhing storm of anger and hatred in front of him.

"So many traitors!" Mare snarled with shaking hands as the Impulse pounded the Destiny's sword with a series of furious hacks. "You and Riika and Courtney...I never realized you'd _all_ turn your backs on me!" The Impulse reared back and slammed its sword down onto the Destiny's blade. "You've left me all alone here, so now—" the Impulse surged forward, "—_I'll finish you!_"

Shinn glowered back as the Impulse charged. _I'm sorry, Riika, but you can't save everyone._

The Impulse blasted forward and swung its sword horizontally—only to catch a flurry of afterimages. Mare blinked in surprise and looked up—

...just in time to see the Destiny Gundam charge out of the heavens and ram its sword through the Destiny Impulse's cockpit. Shinn frowned as the burning ember of hatred vanished; he yanked his sword free from the dying mobile suit and kicked it away, and watched sadly as it disappeared within a cloud of smoke and fire.

"Well," he sighed, "that's what he wanted."

The Destiny turned and rocketed away.

—

The Gundam Eclipse skidded to a halt on the riverbank north of Belém, where Rau's CGUE and the Gaia were waiting. The Destiny was not far behind. Emily cast a reluctant look back towards the burning city and keyed on the frequency for Ed and Jane's mobile suits.

"Are you sure you don't want us to stay?" she asked.

Jane emphatically shook her head. "We fought this hard to get you here, don't screw it up by trying to be a hero. Get out of here while you still can."

"But what about you?"

Ed grinned back. "Just leave the hero business to us. We can get out of here no problem."

The CGUE stepped up next to the Eclipse, Rau with a serious look on his face. "They are right, Emily," he said. "It is best not to linger. The Alliance is reinforcing its positions. We'll be trapped soon if we don't leave."

Emily looked one more time towards Belém and heaved a heavy sigh. "Good luck, you guys," she said quietly.

"Same to you," said Ed, and his screen went dark. Jane smiled back reassuringly.

"We'll cover you until you've escaped. Don't look back."

Her screen went dark as well, and Emily turned her eyes towards the sea—towards the _Minerva_, waiting near the horizon. The mobile suits leapt up into the air, the engines came to life, and they took off, back home.

—

To be continued...


	26. Phase 26: The Deep and Lonely Sea

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 26 - The Deep and Lonely Sea

—

**May 14th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The first thing to greet Emily von Oldendorf as she wearily stepped out of the Eclipse's cockpit was a bone-crushing hug from Viveka. Other than the bruise her sister's mechanical arm was going to leave on her back, it did leave her with a nice warm feeling of kinship. Something she had found herself missing—and something she was surprised to see she was so happy to have again.

"Next time you go running off into the Earth's atmosphere on your own," Viveka admonished, "don't land so goddamned far away."

"R-Right," Emily squeaked as her sister let her go. "What did I miss?"

The triumphant look on Viveka's face said it all.

"Um, congratulations?"

"Why, what were _you_ up to?"

Emily's eyes fell towards the floor. "I'll tell you later." She looked back up at the feeling of Athrun approaching, and tried not to blush at the little flutter that stirred in Viveka. "How come the Justice wasn't out there?"

"It got trashed up in space," Athrun said, and paused to give Emily a hug of his own. "Glad to have you back, though. We were a bit shorthanded for a while."

The _Minerva_'s hangar rattled as the catapult swung open to receive the DOM Trooper, fresh from a patrol run outside the ship. Emily smiled nervously at the storm of excitement rippling out from inside the green mobile suit's cockpit.

"I guess I was missed," she mumbled, and smiled back at Athrun and Viveka. "I should go say hi. He was probably pretty obnoxious without me."

"Who, Trojan? All he really did was sulk." Viveka's smile faded. "Are you okay, Em? You seem distracted."

The roaring fires of Anori and the haunting words of Rau Le Creuset echoed in her mind. She shook them out. "I'm fine," she said, "I'm just going to go say hi to the others."

Emily made a quick escape down the gantry, leaving behind Athrun and Viveka, and the latter glanced nervously at the former. "Well?"

Athrun turned his gaze towards the CGUE Assault, as it settled into a corner of the hangar. "I'll deal with it," he said.

—

"And now we've got five mobile suits again," Roxy said with a grin. "It's like the good old days again."

"No it's not," Meyrin interrupted, and leaned forward to peer at the strategic map. "We've got to get to Gigafloat. We're running out of mobile suits." She glanced up towards Burt. "IFFs in our course?"

Burt was silent for a moment as he consulted the scopes. "Alliance ships on maneuvers in the South Atlantic. Gigafloat is a thousand kilometers off the Kenyan coast. The fastest route from here would be overland in Africa, into the Red Sea, and through the Bab-el-Mandeb."

"And not that one," Abbey added, and pointed at the map—and the blinking dots of the Alliance's major bases in sub-Saharan Africa. "There are too many bases along the strategic sea routes, and we're in no condition to go fighting our way past a base."

Meyrin's heart sank. Through the Red Sea would run them by the Alliance's mighty naval base at Socotra; through the south would run them by South Africa and Madagascar and the full power of the South African Union; through the Mediterranean would force them to pass the unassailable fortresses of Gibraltar and Suez; circling around the Cape of Magellan and heading the other way would take too long...but as she studied the strategic map, there was still cause for hope. Alliance forces were heaviest along the coast and in Egypt, and the base at Gibraltar meant passage by sea into the Mediterranean was impossible, but that dusty, impoverished, forgotten wasteland of Mauritania...the Alliance had left a chink in Africa's armor.

"We'll travel through the Sahara," she said at last, to the surprise of her crew. "It's all desert. The Alliance doesn't bother patrolling it. We'll pass through the Saharan countries, swing south, follow the Nile to Ethiopia, cross the Horn of Africa, and turn south into the Indian Ocean." She glanced down at the helm. "Malik, plot us our course."

Her crew got to work and Meyrin sat back, forcing down the unease creeping up her spine. Africa was well protected in some areas, but the Alliance had written off others, and the vast sweep of the Sahara was home to those Resistance fighters who could stand the sweltering heat. The _Minerva_ could find friends there.

They would have to, she mused, because the world was filling up with enemies.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The _Aristotle_ was as silent as submarines could be, and it was these moments of silence that made Camwell appreciate his job as a submariner. Few other weapons of war gave their operators a chance to simply think—and, sequestered in a metal tube almost a kilometer from the ocean's surface, a man often had nothing but his thoughts and his task to keep him company.

Camwell stood on the conn and watched with annoyance as the crew went about their tasks. Nine hundred meters down and blazing on silent drive at flank speed through the Atlantic Ocean, with the reactor humming at nearly one hundred and five percent. Nothing on sonar or the periscope. Just the _Aristotle_ at top speed in the mighty Atlantic.

But so had Captain Hatias ordered. After all, the _Aristotle_ had to navigate the Strait of Gibraltar and pass by what had once been ZAFT turf, but now sat under the flag of OMNI Enforcer. It was the only feasible route into the Mediterranean, where the _Minerva_ was surely headed, and the silent drive would make it work.

Camwell clenched his fists in frustration. Gibraltar. He had been stationed there once, briefly, during the Valentine War, as a junior officer aboard a ship that called its mighty fortress home. It was one of ZAFT's rightful bases, won by the blood of Coordinators...and here they were, passing it up.

It would be child's play to unleash a full spread of torpedoes, sink the ships where they sat in dock, and surface with a barrage of missiles and mobile suits. They had the silent drive. They had the element of surprise. They had _boldness_, for God's sake, the sheer audacity it would take to bomb the Rock, the castle door of the Mediterranean, into oblivion. But once again, Captain Hatias demurred when glory and imperative called.

It made his stomach churn. They would pass Gibraltar in a few days, and Camwell knew not what he would do as their opportunity passed them by on the surface. Why the captain wanted to ambush the _Minerva_ in the Mediterranean was a similar mystery, but Camwell had his own doubts about that. There was little good reason, really, for the _Aristotle_ to go hunting the _Minerva_ with all that important strategic work to do.

And there were the other possibilities as well...the ones he wanted even less to consider.

—

With a heavy crash, the battle-worn Proto Abyss fell back into place in the _Aristotle_'s yawning mobile suit hangar. From his place on the gantry, Alec Ladd watched tiredly as the mechanics started reloading the M68 cannons. His battle against the Forbidden Blue had been taxing; he had worn down the ammo container to its last salvo of shells.

And it had been taxing in other ways as well. The Alliance's White Whale deserved that fearsome reputation of hers.

The sting of failure still shot through his bones. After all that, Willard's detachment was so much rusting wreckage under the water's surface, and the _Aristotle_ had gotten away only by the skin of its teeth. The Amazon River remained in Alliance hands. The whole thing had just been a waste of ZAFT's too-few lives.

He glanced up at the Proto Abyss's stern face and wondered if perhaps that hadn't been a good thing. The city in flames, the Alliance carpet-bombing the locals, ZAFT determined to target not just the docks and the river mouth but the civilians along the way...at this point, it was hard to tell who was the bad guy.

Alec's blood burned at the thought. Wars never had a shortage of bad guys, but a war without a good guy...that was just pointless slaughter. And that was the worst kind of war of all.

—

**May 15th, CE 77 - Athens Naval Installation, Greece, Eurasian Federation**

The Earth Alliance Navy was the composite naval fighting force of the great powers that made up the Earth Alliance. And with the Phantom Pain at the top of the Alliance's military hierarchy totem pole, an enterprising Phantom Pain officer would have the best the world had to offer among his choices of naval officers, crews, and equipment.

_Of course_, mused Ivan Danilov bitterly, _we're _all_ supposed to be the best._

The captains of seven warships of the Earth Alliance Navy sat before him in a small elliptical conference room, all eyes locked on the officer who technically outranked them. It had taken a lot more of that Phantom Pain pulling of rank than Danilov had liked to get them here, but if his plan worked, nobody would care.

"The _Minerva_'s projected course will take it into the Mediterranean near Algiers, and it will move back down over the continent near Tobruk in Libya," he explained, and tapped a baton against the wire grid map behind him. "That time in the Mediterranean gives us an opportunity. We will move the _Charlemagne_ to Malta and force a confrontation with the _Minerva_ in the Gulf of Sidra. Meanwhile, your ships will be docked in Benghazi and they will move in as soon as we've engaged the enemy. We'll back them towards the coast; you'll sweep up from the south and hit them from behind. Classic pincers movement." He tapped the baton meaningfully against his hand. "Any questions?"

One of the officers leaned forward. "If we're against the coast, our backs will be exposed to land-based reinforcements," he protested, "and you know that we don't have the Mediterranean coast _entirely_ pacified."

"I am aware of the threat the desert guerrillas could pose to our plans," Danilov answered, "but we have no intelligence to suggest that they possess weapon systems that could interfere. If we keep the battle far enough from the shore, their weapons won't be of any use. And there are no other Resistance units in the region with heavier weapons." He fixed the officers with a steely gaze. "I want there to be no illusions, gentlemen. You know the _Minerva_'s reputation—but even with their mobile suit complement reduced, they will exact a fearsome toll. I should know." He tapped his baton again. "It will be a battle in the truest sense of the word—but you are the finest of the Alliance Navy, and if anyone can help me, it's you. Dismissed."

—

She paced around him tirelessly, heels clicking on the harsh metal surface of the dockyard. Sven Cal Bayan felt his muscles tighten with every step, and the questions rang through his mind. Why hadn't he done what he had planned to do? Why hadn't he taken care of this already? It would have been so easy.

So easy, yes...but he had the taunting voice of Shinn Asuka to thank for _this_.

"If you won't take the Gamma Glipheptin," Yukiko said studiously, "and you won't submit to Extended treatment, then it would seem that we're out of options." She fixed Sven with a hard look. "My Crusader can certainly beat the Destiny, but you need an edge to overcome him. He is a dragon most difficult to slay."

Sven ground his teeth hatefully. "I will not consent to being turned into a science project."

"Oh, but you want to defeat the Destiny," Yukiko interrupted. "I know I'm not the only one who's lost something to that Gundam. There's you! You've lost I don't know _how_ many battles, and comrades, and—" She shook her head. "No more. If Gamma Glipheptin and Extended treatment are off the table, then we'll just need a third option." Yukiko whirled around with a wide grin on her face. "I've called in a favor from Actaeon Industries. They've been working on a fun new toy for mobile suit combat. You wouldn't happen to recall a unit called the -X117 Diablo, would you?"

From the misty valleys of Sven's memory emerged the image of a heavily modified Dagger L. "Yes. Why?"

"Well, the Diablo carried a special cockpit system called the Psyco System," explained Yukiko, "a system that allowed the pilot to interact directly with the mobile suit. The result was much faster reaction times and better-honed decision-making skills."

Sven arched an eyebrow. "And the downside?"

"If you use it too long, you'll risk mental damage," she smiled, "but I'm sure that won't be an issue for you—"

"Out of the question," Sven said harshly.

"Oh, don't be too hasty," Yukiko protested. "Don't you want to get him back? Don't you want to stop him?" The silver-haired pilot twitched as the memories returned, and with them that hateful feeling in his blood. "I know you do. You just need one more bit of power—and I have it." She smiled again—and Sven felt a chill wash over him. "You have nothing to fear."

Fear. Sven's mind shot back to his battle in space—to Shinn Asuka, taunting him for his fear.

"Fine."

—

"It's pretty fucked up," sighed Shams Coza as the elevator descended with himself and an annoyed-looking Mudie Holcroft aboard. He glanced over at his taciturn companion, finding her face once again unreadable. He knew she had emotions going on somewhere in that pretty little head of hers. Somewhere.

Mudie glanced at him inquiringly.

"Sven's been ignoring us lately," he added.

"Sven always ignores us."

"But this is different. He always at least used to drag us all together to go over tactics or something. Now all he does is tinker with the Crusader and seethe at Nakajima."

Mudie scoffed. "What do I care?"

"Well, he _is_ our boss, and if he goes crazy, we're gonna have to deal with it."

That did not do the trick; Mudie simply stared out in even more apparent annoyance as the elevator slowed to a halt at ground level. Shams heaved a sigh as they walked out onto the dockyard—and into the towering shadow of the mighty _Charlemagne_ in its concrete berth at the water's edge.

"Oh, what do I care," he grumbled. "Crazy bastard will just get us killed anyway."

Mudie whirled around on her heel, her eyes wide and furious. "Nobody is going to kill me," she snapped. "Nobody."

"What—Mudie—"

"_Nobody_."

And with that, Mudie whipped around again and stalked away, towards the ship. Shams stood behind and stared after her in confusion.

—

The docks of the Athens Naval Installation shuddered as seven warships edged out of their berths and towards the sunlit horizon. The briefings had been quite clear; they were part of the plan, on their way to Benghazi, Libya, to lay a trap for the _Minerva_. The ship at the lead, the _Spengler_-class carrier _Clausewitz_, turned its bow south. The six destroyers and frigates surrounding it did likewise. And then the water went white and the seven ships of Captain Danilov's plan set off for Benghazi.

From his vantage point on the observation deck above the waiting _Charlemagne_, Grey Saiba could see the ships slowly fading into the horizon. He wondered how many of them would survive.

And, with the battlefield turning towards another war-torn city filled with innocent civilians, he had to wonder what he would be called on to do there.

He glanced over at Merau, leaning against the railing and staring tiredly after the moving vessels. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing. And then there was Erin, on the other side, looking almost as troubled.

At that, he wondered what could possibly be on _her_ mind, but she preempted him. "Didn't the _Minerva_ get by a fleet even bigger than this at Hormuz?" she asked wearily.

Grey looked back out towards the departing squadron. "Yeah."

"Then why are we trying this again?"

"The captain has a different plan this time," Merau explained, "and the _Minerva_ has fewer mobile suits. We can make this work."

Erin frowned. "It didn't the last time."

Grey leaned forward against the railing and stared out past the ships, past the port, into the glittering ocean. It would have to work—because he didn't know how much more of this he could take.

—

A heavy truck bearing the half-disassembled form of a mobile suit rumbled by on the wide dockyards of the Athens base. With his disgust at it all only barely hidden, Travis Alterman stifled a yawn and mentally navigated the path up ahead, through a thicket of workers, machinery, and vehicles, towards the steady stream of supplies winding its way towards the _Charlemagne_.

At his side, Kelly Maynard spared a quick look around. "We're leaving soon, you know," she said, "so you can quit looking around like a caged animal, ready to spring."

"Soon ain't soon enough, dear," Travis said with a wave. "I've only gotten two good sorties in since we got assigned to this rust bucket. I think I'm entitled to bitch a bit."

"I think differently," Kelly shot back.

"I know you do."

Kelly turned up her nose. "Is that all there is to you, Travis? Really? You just want to fight?"

Travis shrugged and shot back a toothy grin. "One way or another I'm goin' to hell," he said, "so I might as well enjoy the ride, baby."

Kelly stomped off in disgust, and Travis stood back with a smirk, watching her go. Yes, that was all there was to him—just a beast, looking for its next kill.

But, as he looked back towards the _Charlemagne_, that was all there was to him—and that's why he was here.

Captain Danilov had his plan to destroy the _Minerva_. Well, good for him; they would see if it would work this time. But until then, destiny would have to keep its eye on him.

—

As the door hissed shut behind him, Ivan Danilov willed away his nervousness. Phantom Pain officer he might be, but not every officer of any branch of the Alliance military was simply _asked for_ by Grand Admiral MacIntyre.

The old admiral turned towards Danilov with an unreadable look on his weathered face, the sun missing him as it struggled through the openings in the blinds of his office window. He looked so old. Perhaps that was what war did to its combatants. Grand Admiral MacIntyre was as old as the Cosmic Era—and this war-torn century had seen no shortage of conflict.

Admiral MacIntyre tiredly returned Danilov's crisp salute. "I hope you take care of those men I loaned you, Danilov," he said with a wan smile as they shook hands. "There aren't a whole lot more where they came from."

"If anyone in the Navy can do it, it will be them," Danilov answered. "What did you want to see me for, sir?"

Admiral MacIntyre sat back behind his desk. "I've been reading some of your reports lately, captain," he said, "and I'm starting to get a better appreciation for the kind of man you are." He fixed Danilov with a stern look. "A man one wouldn't expect to find in the Phantom Pain."

Danilov frowned. "Sir...?"

"Specifically," MacIntyre continued, "I've read the reports on your actions in Volgograd." He arched an eyebrow. "And your actions in Sagan City." He tapped his cane on the floor quietly, cutting Danilov off as he opened his mouth. "Let's not bullshit each other, captain. I know the difference. In Volgograd you had Marshal Markav breathing down your neck, and in Sagan City you were left to your own devices. And you chose two different paths. So," he gestured towards the black-uniformed man, "let's hear your side of the story."

Danilov blinked. "I-Is this some kind of investigation for a court-martial, sir?"

"That depends on what you have to say. Let's hear it, captain."

Silence hung in the room as Danilov processed it all and struggled to find his words. "I...I don't really know what you're getting at, sir," he said at last.

MacIntyre leaned forward. "I want to know what kind of man you are, Captain Danilov," he answered. "The man at Volgograd looks like something of a toady, following the boss's orders—even though we both know what the boss's orders were." He waved a hand dismissively. "But the man at Sagan City is totally different, passing up a shot at his quarry, letting them get away—" he smirked at Danilov's shocked expression, "—and lest you forget, captain, I've been in this business my whole life. I know what it looks like when you intentionally let your target escape." He smiled enigmatically. "So. There's two different men at work in these events. I want to know which one is Captain Danilov. The man who follows evil orders, or the man who follows his own moral compass." The admiral sat back again, expectation hovering in the air. "So?"

Silence again—and Danilov swallowed his unease. "My moral compass, sir, has often failed me."

"Happens to the best of us."

"But sir, I don't understand what this is all about. Forgive my impertinence, but I don't always have superior officers questioning my character."

MacIntyre turned away with a heavy sigh. "No, probably not." He paused for a moment, and Danilov could see the gears of his old mind working in his eyes. "You've been deployed this whole time, so you're probably not in on the political gossip, and I trust you know better than to go blabbing about this." He looked Danilov in the eye, and the old captain felt a chill run down his spine. "This war is going to end, soon. And it won't be pretty. The politicians are mobilizing to force Djibril to bring an end to this. Whether it's by attack or negotiation, they've had it. And there's going to be changes around here."

"But the next election in the Atlantic Federation isn't for another year," Danilov protested. "How—"

"Nobody said anything about elections."

"Then...a _coup?_"

"Call it what you like. The point is, the political leadership will be changing. Which means the potential for conflict." He leaned forward again, and this time there was no mistaking the edge in his voice. "I need to know, captain, so I'll ask it one more time. Which man are you? And whose side would you be on?"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

Meyrin Hawke had always enjoyed geography. The interplay of ancient, natural forces and human agency to create politics, economies, cultures, histories, all of it appealed to that meticulous nature that had gotten her selected to oversee the Impulse Gundam's complicated launching process so long ago. And now, after three years in the captain's chair, she understood just why she hadn't been chosen to sit there in the first place. The captain of this ship could not be too worried about details. Not when she had to invent strategies on the fly and leave the details for others to work out.

But these were the moments where she felt comfortable in command. Hunched over the _Minerva_'s mapping console at the back of the bridge with a wire-grid map of Africa before her, here she felt that confidence on its way back.

The _Minerva_ would have to travel over land in Mauritania and Algeria, and it would have to slip by the Alliance and local police's presence on the Mediterranean coast. But there were plenty of holes there, and the cluster of population centers along the coast ensured that there were always Resistance fighters in position to help if need be. And if it came to blows, the Sahara was wide and unforgiving.

She frowned at her plotted course and undid the second leg of it. A message had gone out to the leader of a major Resistance cell, staying on the Atlantic coast in Mauritania. They would have to discuss their strategy; for now, she expected to have to enter the Mediterranean somewhere in western Algeria, travel over the ocean, and then reenter the continent somewhere to the east. The city of Benghazi was teeming with Resistance fighters. Perhaps that would make a good destination.

Meyrin sat back in one of the seats with a heavy sigh. All this, just to get the ship past Suez and Socotra. But soon they would stop being on the defensive. She looked up ahead, at the hazy horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon they would turn this war around. Before it went out of control.

—

"It's been pretty quiet here, really," Viveka explained as she strode down the _Minerva_'s hallways with what Emily found to be an odd spring in her step, Trojan bringing up the rear. "Sting and Auel woke up."

"I know," Emily mumbled, "I, uh, met them earlier." A string of obscenities from a game of _Uno_ gone wrong—or right, with them it was hard to tell—echoed in her head. "I guess they're feeling okay now?"

"Okay enough to bitch at each other over board games," Viveka answered with a shrug. "So how was your little jungle adventure?"

Emily squirmed at the memories. "Uh, could've been better."

"We heard about Anori," Trojan said, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She smiled back weakly and pushed out the images of a town reduced to a crater.

"At least you got them back for it," added Viveka. "And Ed the Ripper can take care of himself, really. I bet all we were doing there was getting out of his way."

Her thoughts drifted back to the other vivid memories of her time in South America—the memories of Rau Le Creuset at the crater's edge, the hand he had offered, the path to which he had pointed. She looked back at Viveka and Trojan, and knew that she could never tell them about that. They would never understand. They could not understand her, herself. More and more, it felt that only Rau Le Creuset really understood her and her condition in life. Even Shinn and Athrun, even with those nightmarish pasts of theirs...well, at least they had chosen their destinies.

Viveka glanced warily at her sister. "You okay, Em? You haven't really been the same since you got back."

Emily closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'm fine," she lied, and thought back to Anori.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Agadez Region, Niger**

The sand rippled under the force of the levitator and the engines. The sinking sun lit the sky like fire as the desert's colors slowly faded into darkness. But for the ship's engines, all was calm and still on the settling sands of this edge of the mighty Sahara.

On the bridge of the _Seraphim_, Varder Ehrmacht suppressed a scowl. Sameness, everywhere. How the Naturals could live in an environment like this was beyond him.

He turned his mind back towards his mission. Crossing this barren wasteland was necessary, because somewhere out there was the _Lesseps_-class land battleship _Arrhenius_. And the _Arrhenius_ had its secrets—and those secrets needed nothing less than the added protection of a FAITH unit. They would rendezvous north of here, at the dismal little army outpost of Madama, and turn those handful of Alliance soldiers into guinea pigs for their new weapons.

And somewhere to the north would be the _Minerva_.

Varder fought down the urge to break something again. Defeating him at every turn, trashing two of his mobile suits, humiliating him in front of the Vice Marshal...all by some little girl with a Gundam.

But there was good news. The _Minerva_'s mobile suit complement had been badly reduced. And the _Arrhenius_'s unit would prove to be a surprise. And there was the _Seraphim_'s new mobile suits, and the training, and the toll the Alliance would likely take as the winged warship made its way across Africa.

He tightened his fists as the sun slipped beneath the sands.

—

**May 16th, CE 77 - ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

"Surface contact, one o'clock," Camwell muttered to himself as he peered through the _Aristotle_'s periscope. "_Maguchi_-class, flying Red Cross and OMNI Enforcer flags."

He glanced over his shoulder on the conn. Captain Hatias wasn't here; he was still back in his bunk. He had specifically left the conn to his executive officer. Whatever the ship did, it would have to be on his command.

Camwell looked back through the periscope. The Alliance usually chartered civilian vessels to act as hospital ships. Even the Resistance tended to simply leave them alone—after all, wounded soldiers were soldiers out of the fight, and that was good enough for a ragtag bunch of guerrillas.

But ZAFT was no band of guerrillas. They were an army for a people who still were prey to their genetic inferiors. They had spent too long defending the moral high ground, and it had cost them everything. Even now, some of ZAFT's men did not understand that. But the ones who did—it was on their shoulders, to strike back, to protect the seed from which their people might grow back.

Camwell turned towards the weapons console. "Fire control, load torpedo tube one and plot a solution. Target is the surface contact at one o'clock. Fire when ready."

"Aye sir." And moments later, the telltale rumble of the torpedo tube firing rattled through the ship. Camwell returned to the periscope—

...just in time to watch the ship above snap in two amid a column of seawater and fire, and seconds later, the broken ends of the ship vanished beneath the waves. He smiled grimly and pushed out of his mind the thoughts of injured soldiers. Injured or not, they would heal, and they would threaten the Coordinators again, just as the Alliance always did. He could not allow that. Not when so little remained already.

"Camwell," a voice broke into his thoughts, and he turned around to find a furious Nathaniel Hatias on the conn. "I don't recall authorizing you to deploy weapons."

Camwell turned up his nose. "I am following our orders, sir." He waved a hand airily. "A hospital ship is an enemy asset all the same—"

"You torpedoed a _hospital ship?_" Nathaniel barked, and closed the distance between them both in two steps. "A _hospital ship?_ Full of wounded soldiers and civilian contractors? What the _hell_ is wrong with you, Camwell?" He whipped around, eyes wide with rage, towards the weapons officer. "You—did you know this?"

His anger softened a bit at the disbelieving look on the weapons officer's face. "A-a hospital ship...?" he repeated quietly.

"Captain," Camwell interrupted with an icy glare, "allow me to remind you of our orders." He drew a piece of paper from inside his uniform, tapped it, and began to read. "'The _Aristotle_ will move at captain's discretion and attack any and all targets of opportunity, including shore installations, military vessels, civilian vessels, and vessels ordinarily protected by international law.'" He arched an eyebrow. "'International law is to be considered null and void. All targets that can be safely targeted must be engaged and destroyed to the greatest extent possible.'"

"Camwell," Nathaniel snarled, "_I_ am the captain of this vessel. Not you. If I tell you to leave civilian targets alone—"

"Our orders," cut in Camwell, "come from a higher authority."

He turned away and went back to work at the periscope, leaving Nathaniel to clench his fists in anger and curse himself for leaving the conn.

"Sir, our heading," the navigator started. Nathaniel nodded painfully.

"Continue on your present course," he answered quietly, and returned his eyes to Camwell—and Captain Hawke rose like a wisp of smoke into his thoughts.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlantic Ocean**

The sky was lit up in brilliant colors as the sun sank down into the ocean's hazy horizon. It was, Emily mused, nearing twilight. Her least favorite hour.

She glanced over her shoulder as she felt the telltale pressure of Shinn Asuka emerging onto the external deck behind her. She hadn't yet spoken much to him about her time in South America. She hadn't yet spoken much to anyone about it.

"So I see the Eclipse held up pretty well," he said quietly as he came to a stop next to her.

"I guess."

Shinn eyed her suspiciously. "I'm sure you and Rau took care of each other?"

"Y-Yes."

"You know," he said, "I don't think I've ever told you what it is he was up to before he found his way to us."

Emily frowned. "He said he was a ZAFT officer in the wars."

"That's one way to put it." Shinn looked up towards the sky. "What did he say to you?"

"H-He told me..." She trailed off and thought back to just what he _had_ said—about the necessity of destruction. "He told me about his past."

"And what did he say?"

Emily glanced awkwardly at Shinn, finding his emotions as unreadable as his face. "That he was a clone, and his genes are defective, and he's dying. And..." She paused. "And that he wanted me to change the world for him, because of that."

Shinn was silent for a long moment, before he glanced down grimly at Emily. "Do you remember the Junius 7 colony drop?" She nodded. "And you know that the ones who carried it out were terrorists loyal to Patrick Zala." Another nod. "But where would they get flare motors and high performance mobile suits if they didn't have a well-placed connection within ZAFT?" He eyed the young Newtype carefully. "It was him."

"Wha—what do you mean?"

"Rau Le Creuset gave them the supplies they needed to carry out the Junius 7 colony drop."

Emily stared in shock. "What—you mean _he_ did that?"

"Yes." Shinn turned towards her, his eyes cold. "That's what he means when he talks about changing the world. He wants to change it, alright—by destroying everything in it."

Emily turned haltingly towards the ship, towards the dim pressure of the masked man within its hull. "_He_ helped carry out Junius 7...?"

The words echoed through her mind.

_Everything must burn before it can be set right._

—

"'Marduk,'" Auel read wearily from Yolant's tablet. They stood with Sting and Vino in the _Minerva_'s hangar, peering at the design for what was meant to be Auel Neider's next mobile suit. And at the very least, it still _looked_ like the old Abyss, despite the generous boost in its firepower.

"Named after a Babylonian god of water and magic," Yolant explained. "There was a theme, you see."

"I do see."

Sting stared thoughtfully at the design for a moment. "So, what, we just piece them all together at Gigafloat and that's that?"

"Sort of," answered Vino with a tired sigh and an even more tired look. "Gigafloat has factories. They can prefabricate the pieces. We already have the design, and it's not like we're demanding some new technology or something, so they can get this done pretty quick. Especially with Gigafloat's big crews."

"Besides," Yolant added with an arched eyebrow, "I would've thought you guys would enjoy your time off."

Sting and Auel glanced at each other. "When there isn't shit to do, sure," Sting said carefully, "but we're both still necessary." He waved an arm out towards the empty mobile suit berths. "We used to be out there, in the fight, helping out. Now we have to sit here and wait while someone else assumes all the risk."

"And," Auel said with a grin, "why should _they_ get all the fun?"

Yolant glanced skeptically down at the tablet again. "You guys have the weirdest idea of fun I've ever known."

—

**May 17th, CE 77 - Nouadhibou, Mauritania, Africa**

Nouadhibou was a graveyard.

Under the pale moonlight and calm, clear night skies, the dusty rat hole of a city on the edge of the African continent could be described no other way. It was a monument to the dead.

And the reason for that was strewn all around the city, in the murky waters around the peninsula on which it rested. For centuries, Nouadhibou had been the dumping ground of choice for shipping companies eager to get around costly deconstruction and environmental regulations for their decommissioned vessels. And the local officials had been corrupt and pliant enough to accept virtually any scrap of metal on the seas for the right price. The governing forces in faraway Nouakchott and farther-away regional governments had tried to clear away this phantom fleet, but business boomed for Nouadhibou's officials and now over five hundred ships of every class and size imaginable disintegrated in the brown, oily waters of the city.

It was this quality that attracted the guerrillas.

Sitting in the back of a dune buggy driven by two of his well-armed bodyguards, Sahib Ashman glanced out towards the water, and the forest of rusting ships. These were the places the Resistance called home: the forgotten places, the cracks in the Earth Alliance's iron edifice, the graveyards, the places nobody thought to look. Almost none of these old scrap heaps were structurally sound or habitable; those that were, however, were teeming with Resistance equipment and fighters. No one would think to check inside that forty-year-old freighter for guerrillas; and thus, nobody would ever find the sixteen fighters and their gear, stashed inside the bridge and quietly waiting for the smugglers.

Sahib turned his eyes back towards the city, slowly fading into the distance. The fishing industry here had been decimated, but the city's one hundred thousand miserable but determined residents continued to find ways to survive. It was for them that he kept up this dangerous business, and it was among them that he could feel at home. They were like him, in their own way, fighting one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth to eke out a living. It was like the desert; he took what was offered, made something out of nothing, found his place in the crevices his enemies had forgotten.

But, as he turned towards the horizon, towards the western shore, his thoughts turned gloomy. Guerrilla warfare was easy compared to what was coming.

"The _Minerva_ will be here in the morning," he said quietly, catching the attention of one of his bodyguards. "They're going to want our help crossing the continent."

"Isn't that what we do best, sir?" the driver asked with a smirk.

"Don't get cocky, Muhammad," Sahib shot back. "Just because you haven't been caught yet doesn't mean you're invincible." He glared back out towards the horizon. "Our operations have been so limited lately..."

"But sir," the other guard started, "we've been shepherding our resources for a day like this. If the _Minerva_ calls in our help, the Alliance won't know what hit them."

Sahib sat back with a tired grunt. Three years of work, it had been—but was it really coming up to this? Was the _Minerva_'s arrival in North Africa really what he had worked so hard to see? Just to watch them blow through on the way to some other battlefield, like they always did?

"Well," he grumbled, "if they get here, that is."

—

To be continued...


	27. Phase 27: The Desert Dawn

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 27 - The Desert Dawn

—

**May 18th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Atlas Mountains, Morocco**

Another day, another hard-bitten guerrilla of the disparate forces of the Resistance. This one had seen fit to stay put and ignore Chiao Xu's call to assemble at Carpentaria, which was probably why he was still alive. He had also assiduously avoided working with other, more famous Resistance units, which also probably had something to do with his not being dead yet. And judging by the disgruntled look on his face, he knew that as well as anybody else.

Sahib Ashman stared back in a mix of annoyance and sympathy on the _Minerva_'s main screen. "I'll do what I can," he said with a shrug, "but it won't be much. You know the Desert Dawn makes do with as little equipment as necessary."

"I know," Meyrin replied, "but I also know that you've gotten new shipments recently and made some new friends in the region. And we could use their help. After all," she risked a smile, "we're all Resistance, aren't we?"

Sahib snorted bitterly. "If only it were that easy. I'll be honest, Captain Hawke. This plan of yours will require a lot from you. My men in Benghazi report Alliance warships in the port. There's nothing they can do about them there without jeopardizing the rest of our operations. And even if this works, once you get past Khartoum you'll be on your own."

"I understand," Meyrin said with a nod. "All we need to do is get down to the Indian Ocean. We can link up with Gigafloat from there."

"If you get that far," Sahib warned. "Khartoum and Port Sudan will be on alert if you can get past the bases along the Mediterranean."

"Well," Meyrin said with a smile, "that's why we're asking for your help."

Sahib heaved a sigh. "Confident to a fault, I fear, captain." He looked back up. "You will have our help in breaking through the Libyan coastline into the continental interior. But we cannot accompany you past the Sahel. We are people of the desert, and our forces are too thin to go any further."

Meyrin nodded. "We appreciate your help, Mr. Ashman."

"Appreciate it if it works. Desert Dawn, out."

—

"I've never met Ed the Ripper," Trojan sighed as he strode down the _Minerva_'s halls behind Emily and Lily. "Is he pretty cool?"

Emily shrugged. "He was really laid-back. But, uh," she frowned, "we were all kind of...busy."

"But you were hanging out with him _and_ Jane Houston!" squealed Lily. "They're, like, super famous cool people or something! Right?"

"I-I guess—"

"That's _awesome!_"

Trojan offered a reassuring smile. "Ed the Ripper and Jane Houston are sort of minor legends among the Resistance. They were among the first to, y'know, be doing what we're doing now."

Emily thought back to that dedicated and professional little organization traipsing through the jungle, and a wave of guilt bubbled up in her veins. They had left so quickly. The least she could have done was stay for a while and help leave the Alliance forces incapable of pursuit. Even if she had managed to destroy some of those missile boats...

"What's wrong?" Lily asked, and forced herself into Emily's field of view. She cast a wicked glance at Trojan. "You didn't meet a _boy_ over there, did you?"

"N-No," Emily started, to Trojan's poorly disguised relief. "But we left in the middle of a battle, and I hope they were alright..."

Her friends stared at her skeptically, before Lily immediately put on another triumphant face. "Well, you should've seen _me!_ We protected the ship while you were gone!"

As Lily descended into a detailed description of her combat exploits, complete with sound effects, Trojan and Emily shared a glance, and Emily's mind wandered back to Shinn's words about Rau.

—

The wire grid image rotated in front of them on the _Minerva_'s computer room screen, with Athrun in the seat and Shinn standing behind him, arms crossed. At last, Shinn spoke up.

"They say it turns into a dragon?"

Before them spun the schematics for the Celestial Justice Gundam, the mobile suit that was to be built for Athrun. Its huge, weapon-laden backpack was supposed to give it the appearance of a dragon after a transformation.

"That's what they said," Athrun said wearily.

"That's not a dragon. That's a crab."

"I know."

"Athrun. Your Gundam turns into a crab."

"I _know_. Please don't rub it in."

Shinn glanced up at the monitor and let out a tired sigh. "Well, they rendered the Judgment already," he said. "Think this can beat it?"

Athrun closed his eyes, deep in thought. "I don't know," he said at last. "I'm hoping it won't come to that. But he's insinuated himself into the crew already so much, and if what you said is any indication..." He shook his head. "I guess we'll have to work from the margins, and hope she doesn't buy into it."

"She's a good kid," Shinn said, and glanced over his shoulder, in the direction of that pulsing pressure he recognized as Emily. "Good kids don't do stuff like that."

Athrun sighed. "But good kids pushed too far turn bad."

—

The Gaia Gundam clanged loudly as its armor fell back into place. The mechanics, their job finished, turned their attention elsewhere and left Stella Loussier standing on the gantry at the crane controls, staring pensively at her silent mobile suit. It was getting old and slow, and it couldn't keep up with her anymore. Abes had said they were going to replace it with a new one, called "Kali." He'd said it was ironic. Stella hoped otherwise. Iron wasn't a very strong material to build a Gundam out of, after all.

It felt weird, to look up at her old mobile suit, the one that had carried her through so many battles and so many memories, and think that it was getting old and would have to be thrown away. It was what she used to protect her friends and help them. It was what kept her safe itself. What would she do without it?

They had promised her a new Gundam, as nimble and dexterous as the Gaia. It would be enough. But it wasn't the Gaia.

She stared at its face and realized how many memories she had with this silly giant robot. It was why she had met Shinn. He had protected her when Neo hadn't, and it was how she helped protect Shinn, in those days when they were on their own with the Mad Typhoon Gang. And they fought in the war and they kept fighting, together, the Destiny and Gaia. Rau had found that amusing, "heaven and earth united," or something like that. Whatever. He made no sense sometimes.

But she looked down at herself, and remembered that she had changed too. Neo was going to be the one to protect her; now it was Shinn. She used to fight for the Alliance; now she fought against them, from a former ZAFT ship, no less. There were new faces and new friends. Everything changed. She would have to change too.

And that meant the Gaia would have to be left behind.

She frowned and wondered what she would change into. It was almost a little scary. But as long as Shinn was there, it wasn't too bad—because he always knew what to do.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Grand Harbour, Malta, Mediterranean Sea**

Grand Harbour was the name of this place, and from the bridge of the _Charlemagne_, Ivan Danilov had to admit that it was definitely a harbor and it was pretty grand as well.

Too big even for the harbor's extensive naval docks, the _Charlemagne_ sat in the middle of the harbor, waiting for its prey to glide past in the wide Mediterranean—much to the annoyance of the local merchant and shipping fleets. But Grand Harbour made for a suitable hiding place to spring the trap. The _Minerva_ was edging out into the sea over the mountains west of Algiers, and if she wanted back into Africa, Captain Hawke would have to choose some of the flat, poorly defended desert coastline of Libya or Egypt—which would take them straight past Malta. And from there, the surface ships could fan out from Benghazi, and with any luck the _Charlemagne_ could drive them to their doom in the Gulf of Sidra.

Assuming, of course, that everything went to plan.

Danilov sat back on the bridge and idly watched a shipping vessel chug past towards the sea. It was peaceful here—and if his plan worked, it would stay that way, and it would stay that way along the Mediterranean coast as well. The sea was the ideal battlefield. The innocent could not get hurt out there.

As the cargo ship drove out to sea, Danilov felt his mind drift back to Admiral MacIntyre's words in Athens. A change in political power in the Earth Alliance—one that would result in Lord Djibril losing power. Certainly the admiral had not mentioned it to have him do anything about it; he intended Danilov to join this little _coup_. But who was going to carry it out? Who was the leader? What did they intend to do with that power—and with ZAFT?

He looked out towards the sea again and hoped the _Minerva_ would show up soon. Fighting his winged foe was always the simpler option.

—

"I don't know about you," Erin Gedelberg gushed, "but all this waiting is killing me. I'd prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."

Standing with her on the _Charlemagne_'s breezy external deck, Grey Saiba arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Most of us enjoy our downtime, y'know."

"If I wanted downtime, I would've just stayed home."

"Oh, right." He glanced back over the railing, towards the bustling harbor.

Erin studied his dour face for a moment. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, only the same thing that's always wrong," Grey sighed. "You know the plan. We back the _Minerva_ into the Gulf of Sidra and surface ships sail out of Benghazi to trap them." He glanced towards the harbor's mouth, and the blurry horizon beyond. "But there's a Resistance presence in Benghazi. Guerrillas that sprung up in the Valentine War and never quite left."

"The Desert Dawn?" Erin scoffed. "They don't even have mobile suits. What can they do to us?"

"That's just it," Grey answered. "They don't really stand a chance, but they're armed and that's excuse enough to..." He trailed off. "Well, you know what happened in Volgograd."

Erin's eye twitched at the mention.

"And don't tell me it was all the Resistance's fault," Grey continued. "I know they have their own horrible things to answer for. But what happened in Volgograd was on us."

"Well, so what if it was?" Erin shot back. "Isn't it worth it to get rid of our enemies?"

"Not if they make more enemies!" Grey looked away, pushing down the pain. "Not if we're no better than they are." He swallowed hard, as a face and a name rose unbidden into his mind. "Not if some of them are _better_ than we are..."

"How can you say that?" She leaned forward. "Are you thinking of—"

"No," Grey cut her off, "but I don't know _what_ to think. And if we have to go destroy another city, I don't know what I'm going to _do_." He looked at Erin, and she froze in place at the regret in his eyes. "So I'm counting on you to make sure it's not something stupid. Okay?"

"W-What do you mean?"

"When we're out there," he said with a wave towards the horizon, "make sure I do the right thing."

And with that, he turned on his heel and headed back inside.

—

"So," Shams Coza said tiredly in the Vanguard's cockpit as he reformatted the operating system for the tenth time, "I guess I'm the only sane person here."

Nobody answered. Of course not; he had closed the hatch precisely to make sure nobody bothered him. And bitching into empty air was always better than just bottling it up and waiting for the inevitable explosion. Pressure always found a crack. Better if the crack it found were intentionally put there.

He closed his eyes as the process took over for itself and sat back. Sven was already insane and there was pretty much no helping him, the crazy bastard. Shams had seen enough soldiers like him in the service. There were only a few ways he could end: death, spiraling into a pit of despair and madness that usually wound its way back to death, or coming to his senses. And in his experience, the first two were the likelier outcomes.

That was a shame, really, because one of the few interests he had managed to ferret out of Sven's compacted little heart was a boyhood love of astronomy. That stuff had never appealed to Shams, but he could respect it all the same. There was cool stuff to see out in space sometimes. But Sven Cal Bayan was not the boy who loved astronomy anymore, and he knew that better than anyone else.

But Mudie...she was the enigma. They hadn't gone through training together, so he had no idea what she had been like before the long hand of the Phantom Pain worked its dark magic, but he suspected it had been rougher on her than on most. It had something to do, he suspected, with why she went around dressed like that—but damned if he knew how those things connected.

Shams heaved a sigh and idly watched the status bar tick closer to the right. They had warned him in training not to get attached to fellow soldiers, at least not in _that_ way, because the ways it could go wrong were legion. And he had seen them all so far—but he had never expected this one to happen to him.

—

"The Nix Providence will be much less useful on Earth, without its DRAGOONs," explained Kelly Maynard on the gantry before her bulky mobile suit. At her side, Merau glanced nervously at her own oddball machine. "That means we'll need to rely even more on teamwork and squad tactics."

Merau frowned. "That would give the Midnight the advantage."

"Yes. So we'll have to compensate."

That wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. She glanced back up at the Nix Providence, their commander in battle, the one that had nearly destroyed the Twilight but had run aground against the Midnight.

She hated to think that Grey's despair was rubbing off on her. Especially after all her lectures about focusing only on the task at hand. But people could only do a Sisyphean task for so long before seeing the pointlessness of it. And these days, even she was beginning to wonder if this was worth it.

Merau shook her head and looked back with as much resolve as she could muster at the Nix Providence. They had a plan now, again. So the others hadn't worked. They would have to make this one work.

_She_ would have to make it work.

—

The simulator was silent. In its chair sat Sven Cal Bayan, with a headset underneath his silver bangs and an elaborate machine behind the cockpit seat, sprouting wires and cables like roots of a tree. He willed himself to be calm; the test wouldn't work otherwise.

"The system works by syncing your brainwaves with the signals from the system's processor," Yukiko's voice explained through the communicator. "It's a lot of complicated particle physics and neuroscience. All you need to know is that once the syncing is complete, you'll be able to move the mobile suit as though it were your own body. It's the next best thing to being a Newtype."

Sven ground his teeth at the word. "Begin the test."

"Are you sure—"

"_Begin the test._"

Yukiko shrugged in the control room. "If you say so. Activating the Psyco System now."

The machines hummed to life and for a moment, all that reached Sven's mind was the vibration of the simulator computer systems booting up and the system itself coming to life. But then—

He gasped at the feeling. It was as if the walls between himself and the outside world had melted away and his world itself was expanding. His mind raced, but the boundaries where the world ended and his mind began were slipping away. _He_ was slipping away, his very essence, like an ice cube melting into a glass of water. He opened his eyes and saw the world through the mobile suit's cameras; he reached out and felt the actuators turning and the gears rotating.

His heart raced and he struggled to push back the tide and keep some order in his mind. If he could just keep something familiar, something safe, something still himself, something he could _control_—

Sven jerked forward with a start and tore the headset off. All at once, the world returned to its proper place, and the walls rose around him once more. He gasped for breath, held up only by the restraints in the cockpit chair.

"Sven?" Yukiko's voice came through. "Are you alright?"

The silver-haired man painfully sat back up. "I...I will not use that system," he said, and winced at the shakiness in his own voice.

"Sven, I told you, it's the closest thing we can do to make you a Newtype and put you on Shinn Asuka's level."

"_I won't use it,_" snapped Sven.

"Why?" Yukiko glared through the control room window, into the simulator. "Are you afraid?"

Sven shut his eyes and ground his teeth. The feeling was back, the walls were back—but now they were cracked, and through them whispered voices.

—

**May 19th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Mediterranean Sea**

The airlock door slammed shut, and on the external deck, Rau Le Creuset smiled. He had been waiting for this moment. Behind him, Emily von Oldendorf walked slowly up to him and came to a nervous stop at the railing by his side. The turmoil within her was all too easy to source. Shinn Asuka was more clever than Rau had given him credit for—but not clever enough.

"I need to know," Emily said at last. "Shinn told me about what you did at Junius 7." She looked at him with earnest eyes. "Is it true?"

Rau smiled back. "Didn't I tell you? Everything must burn before it can be set right."

Emily blanched and took a step back. "Y-You _helped_ them?"

"In a manner of speaking—"

"You helped those terrorists kill _a quarter million people?_"

Rau turned to her with a sweep of his coat. "If you put it like that," he said, "then I sound like a ghastly murderer. But you're not looking at it in the right way—"

"You _killed a quarter million people!_"

"Yes," Rau said, with enough force to stop her, "in a manner of speaking, I did. But," he raised a finger, "I _did_ tell you about this, at Anori. Using your power has consequences. The world does not passively accept the imposition of one person's will. It resists—and when it does, people die."

Emily glared back. "I didn't mean for what happened in Anori to happen."

"And I didn't mean for Junius 7—"

"But you _helped them!_"

Rau raised a hand. "If you'd let me finish..." He waited until Emily made no sign of interrupting. "I will say that I didn't mean for Junius 7 to happen in a larger sense." He spread his arms. "Do I want people to die as a result of my efforts to force the world to change? Of course not. Must they anyways, if my efforts are to be successful? Unfortunately, yes." He grinned down at her disbelieving face. "This isn't something you can't relate to, Emily."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why, your entire career on the _Minerva_." He leaned down. "Your entire _life_." He swept an arm out towards the horizon. "In a small way, you've been doing what I've been doing for years. You impose your will on the world—to create, for example, a world where that Extended in Karelia, Kyali, might be safe. Or to create a world where Sagan City would not be gassed by ZAFT. Or to create a world where the _Minerva_ wins a battle or lives to fight another day. And the world resists, so you fight its resistance, and people die as a result." He smirked as the disbelief slowly began to fade around the edges. "That's what you were _made_ to do. That's what the Angel of Death _does_. Humans resist their destiny to the very end, but you must impose death upon them, and that is what your power is for." He leaned in close. "And all I've told you to do—all I've said—is to _take it._"

Emily frowned back at him. "By killing so many people?"

"Oh, _your_ method may not require that," Rau said with a shrug, "but then again, it might. It's your power to choose, after all."

Silence reigned between them for a moment. "You said you were trying to change the world," Emily said after a moment's thought, "but look what you've turned it into."

"Oh, yes, a work in progress gone awry," Rau said with a wave, "but this too serves our purpose. Because if anything will shake humanity out of its stupor, it will be an awful enough war, right?"

Emily glanced away. Her father wormed his way back into her thoughts—her father, preening and strutting before his hired goons about what a brilliant little weapon she had become. A weapon, a thing made only to destroy...

She turned around. "I won't do it that way."

"Of course not," Rau said. "After all, nobody can control the Angel of Death."

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Agadez Region, Niger**

Varder Ehrmacht watched with crossed arms and Lilith at his side as the _Seraphim_ came to a halt amid the Sahara's burning sands. The ship stopped—and the bridge's occupants looked up towards the auxiliary screen, magnified to show the towering hulk of an Earth Alliance _Hannibal_-class land battleship. The hulking vessel, with its heavy armor and mass and mobile suits escorting it from the air, would make an excellent test target.

In front of the _Seraphim_, the _Arrhenius_ moved forward, and the grim young face of Eli Esram stepped forward on the other ship's bridge with an intercom in hand. "Target has entered range. Beginning the test now. Kent, Gomez, you may fire when ready."

Varder frowned as he watched the next shape move into position—the hulking chunk of armor with a long cannon over its shoulder, hovering on jet engines taken from the DOM Trooper, painted in mottled desert camouflage. A red monoeye flashed to life, the cannon ticked downward silently—and then the world shook.

The massive ZAKU Ranger let loose a shuddering blast from its hyper-velocity rail cannon. An instant later, far away, the _Hannibal_-class snapped in two along the center and a column of fire erupted from its innards.

"Wow," Lilith breathed as the smoke curled up from the ship's ruined, smoldering hull, "one shot and it took the whole thing out."

"Muzzle velocity and projectile impact force are as expected," one of the _Arrhenius_ crew reported. "The test was a success, commander."

On the _Arrhenius_, the pride of a creator watching his creation flickered across Eli's face before he brought the intercom up to his mouth again. "Six Jet Windam mobile suits have survived the ship's destruction and are on the move. Begin the second test. Give Unit X3000Q clearance to take off."

Varder blinked and glanced over at Lilith. "Second test—?" she started.

The _Arrhenius_ shuddered as a mobile suit rocketed out of its hangar. They both blinked again at the sight of the gray Providence ZAKU, shoulder shields and beam rifle and all, roaring towards the approaching squad of Windams. Varder threw a switch for his own communicator.

"Commander Esram," he said, "we weren't informed of a second test today."

"Yes, about that," Esram said with a shrug, "my apologies. My orders were from Vice Marshal Yamato himself to keep this secret, even from you."

"Even from us?"

"From as many people as possible. Nothing personal, I'm sure."

Varder frowned as he glanced after the gray mobile suit. "We were only told of the ZAKU Ranger's testing," he said. "Nobody told us you'd be testing the Providence ZAKU as well."

Esram smiled back. "It's not the Providence ZAKU we're testing, commander."

Varder opened his mouth to reply, but Lilith's gasp cut him off—and in disbelief, he watched the Providence ZAKU plunge into battle. It flung itself into the center of the Windams' lines before they could react and opened fire with its DRAGOONs, and two of the Windams went down in flames before they could react. The ZAKU whipped around and fired again with its beam rifle as the Windams split apart, and speared another Windam through the cockpit. The three remaining mobile suits scrambled for distance behind beam rifle blasts and missiles; the ZAKU danced elegantly around their shots and roared up close towards the closest opponent. With a blinding flash, a beam saber appeared in its left hand from its right-hand shoulder armor; with another, the blade went slicing through the Windam's waist.

As the defeated mobile suit exploded, the ZAKU blasted up over its foe's fiery death throes and showered the remaining two mobile suits with beam fire. It lined itself up for a full barrage from its DRAGOONs, forcing the two Windams apart—and with a beam rifle blast, the one on the right went spiraling down towards the sands in flames.

The last Windam poured beam fire after the ZAKU as it backpedaled, but the gray mobile suit expertly navigated the storm—and with another burst of light, the ZAKU's saber slammed through the Windam's cockpit. The Windam shuddered once and slumped backwards, off the ZAKU's blade, to plummet towards the ground and explode.

Monoeye blazing amid the smoke and flames, the Providence ZAKU turned back towards the _Arrhenius_.

"Magnificent," Esram said with a clap of his hands. "Reaction time, snap decision-making skills, precision, control...it's all there. Better than predicted."

Varder and Lilith stood on the _Seraphim_'s bridge, mouths hanging open in disbelief. "Th-That mobile suit took out six Windams in less than a minute," Lilith gaped.

"Commander Esram," Varder began shakily, "what the hell were you testing here?"

The Providence ZAKU approached as Esram grinned proudly.

"Let's just say that even angels can fall."

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Strait of Gibraltar**

Gibraltar.

Nathanial Hatias remembered that place well. That strategic rock that stood as the castle gate of the Mediterranean Sea, controlling all entry and exit into Europe's little pool. Its capture by ZAFT in the Valentine War had been a major coup once coupled with the capture of Egypt and the Suez Canal; they had trapped two whole fleets of the Alliance navy in the Mediterranean at the height of their power. And Gibraltar had been the home port of his old command. Back then.

Back then...

Camwell had demanded an attack, but one pass by an AWACS DINN had put that idea completely out of the question. With the Mediterranean's gate back in their possession, the Alliance had greatly expanded the base's various defenses and capacities, and now it was all the _Aristotle_ could do just to sneak past. And this little passing at night, barely submerged in the shallowest point with the silent drive at full tilt, bore the risk of discovery at any moment. Everything was silent. All unnecessary power was switched off. And the ship was damned _cold_.

Standing on the darkened conn as the _Aristotle_ made its perilous passage, Nathaniel watched the scopes amid the palpable tension. The base was sliding by overhead, and earlier the periscope had caught dozens of Alliance warships in the base's prodigious docks. Another warship chugged by overhead. Nathaniel cringed; the torpedo tubes were flooded and doors opened, ready to fire, but if they didn't have to use them, so much the better.

"Arriving at Point Quebec," the navigator said, his voice barely a whisper. "Time to Point Romeo: seven minutes."

Nathaniel nodded and held back a sigh. On this target, he could understand Camwell's frustration. Attacking Gibraltar and slipping into the night would be a most devastating blow to the Alliance. But it would come at a cost that could not easily be replaced, and Nathaniel was not willing to take that kind of risk.

Besides which, he mused as he glanced towards his imposing executive officer, he had to wonder just how far Camwell would go once let off the leash.

—

**May 20th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Grand Harbour, Malta, Mediterranean Sea**

The door hissed open and the _Charlemagne_'s bridge fell silent at the sight of the new arrival. Rising from the captain's chair, Ivan Danilov suppressed a cringe. He always hated these bureaucrats and their last-minute demands.

But as he laid eyes on this one, he felt a shiver run down his spine as he realized that this man was no ordinary paper-pusher. Instead, as he looked into the eyes of Gerhardt von Oldendorf, he saw a man with a purpose and a steel rod down his spine. He wasn't here merely to do something; he was here _for_ something.

_The Angel of Death,_ he realized, _this is her father_.

"Welcome aboard the _Charlemagne_, Director Oldendorf," Danilov said after a moment's pause, and extended his hand for an icy shake. "I apologize, but since your arrival here was so short-notice, we only have an empty crew bunk open for you." He glanced up awkwardly at the blonde Phantom Pain officer that had arrived with him. "And for Lieutenant Ramos."

Lieutenant Ramos merely smiled back and offered a dutiful salute.

"It will do," Gerhardt said with a wave. "I don't expect to be spending much time there anyway."

"If I might ask, sir," Danilov said, and showed the younger man to an empty chair on the bridge, "the message alerting us of your arrival did not specify what you would be doing here."

Gerhardt settled into the offered seat. "Observation," he answered. "Phantom Pain Command has taken great interest in the _Minerva_'s new Gundam."

"And they sent the Director of Military Procurements?"

"Apologies, captain, but much of my work will be above your pay grade. I'm sure you understand."

"Of course, sir."

_Of course_, mused Danilov, _the _Minerva_'s new Gundam...and its pilot_. He had wondered why Captain Chevalier's report from Terminal had disappeared so quickly. And now, here was her father—and the director of Project Evolution.

The sensor board lit up and the sensor officer turned in his chair. "Captain, infrared signature," he said. "It's the _Minerva_. Passing to the northeast at flank speed."

Danilov glanced at an intrigued Gerhardt. "Looks like you were just in time, director." He turned towards the helm. "All hands, prepare for flank speed. Commence the operation."

—

**Benghazi, Libya**

Sahib Ashman felt the sand crunch underneath his boots as he leapt out of the jeep with his bodyguards and made his way towards the dilapidated warehouse on the outskirts of Benghazi. The city itself was seething with Resistance operatives and most of them were his, but there was also a sizable police presence and a military garrison. Prudence was always the name of the game.

The door obligingly creaked open as a few of the young, grimy fighters of the Desert Dawn greeted him in the shadows. Sahib stepped past the threshold and the past the notice proclaiming this structure to be uninhabitable. Uninhabitable, yes—to those who didn't know better.

"We don't have that many mobile suits for this, Sahib," a voice from behind said. Sahib turned around in the darkness and arched an eyebrow at the figure silhouetted against the sunlit doorway. "Twenty one mobile suits that can fly, after spending who knows how much money getting together all that flight equipment. Are you sure this is worth it?"

Sahib stepped forward. "It's not like you to have doubts, Coniel."

The brown-haired girl shook her head indifferently and stepped into the scant light inside the warehouse. "Charging into whatever trouble the _Minerva_ is dragging behind it isn't my idea of a combat debut." She came to a stop at the railing with Sahib, and they both peered down past the nets and tarps—at the transformed Murasame lying down below, pointed upward on a launch track. "We've never had combat experience as a unit. We only have the pilots who already have experience, and simulator exercises. And we're up against the Alliance Navy. Maybe even the Phantom Pain."

"Are you saying you can't do it?"

Coniel sniffed in annoyance. "_I_ can. But what about the others?"

"That's your problem. We've been marshaling these resources, but we've never really had a goal to use them for. Now we have one."

"And we're going to attract their attention in a big way," Coniel warned.

"I will deal with that. You just worry about your part of the plan. Understand?"

Coniel heaved a sigh. "Yes sir."

"Good. I have enough to worry about without you getting all squirmy on me."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Mediterranean Sea**

"So your new Gundam turns into a giant crab? Seriously?"

Sitting in the chair in the _Minerva_'s computer room, Athrun Zala did his best to hold back a sigh of resignation and slowly turned around to face Viveka. His heart sank further at the sight of her not making any attempt in the slightest to hide her amusement.

"_Technically,_" he grumbled, "it's a _dragon_."

"Well _technically_ I ain't _never_ seen no dragon that looks like it just needs some butter and boiling water to make a decent dinner." She crossed her arms and smirked back. "Why did they make it turn into a crab anyway?"

Athrun let out his awaited sigh and decided that he should probably close the schematics for his new Gundam before she found something else to mock about it. "It was supposed to be for greater versatility in combat roles," he said, "_and it was supposed to be a dragon_."

"Yeah, whatever." She leaned down over the seat. "So where's _my_ Gundam, eh?"

With another sigh, Athrun duly called up the next set of schematics, and Viveka promptly cooed in delight at the sight of the sleek, crimson Aurora Gundam. "It's pretty much an upgraded Savior," Athrun explained with a shrug. "They gave it a couple missile launchers and a major upgrade to its speed and maneuverability. You'll see."

"Now _that_ looks like a dragon!" she laughed. Athrun rolled his eyes. "But seriously, I hope we get to Gigafloat soon. Sitting around here with nothing to do is driving me nuts. The only thing we have left to do is—"

"Drive _me_ nuts?"

Viveka smirked down at him. "That's not what _I_ was thinking of."

"O-Oh."

"You're hopeless, Zala."

—

Stella Loussier danced across the _Minerva_'s external deck amid a wave of giggles. From their haunt near the airlock, Sting and Auel watched wearily with crossed arms as she pirouetted across the walkway and...neither of them had any idea what the hell she did after that. Probably she didn't either.

"So," Sting said quietly, "you've been hearing what Shinn and Athrun have been up to?"

"What, about the Phantom of the Opera?" Auel asked. Sting nodded. "I know they have bad blood with him. What's got their panties in a bunch?"

"Dunno. Something during the Junius War, I think." Sting glanced back out towards Stella, and watched as her spin burned out and she wound up facing somewhere to the ship's starboard. "Think it's important?"

"What the hell would I care about it?"

"Okay, just asking." They both fell into an uncomfortable silence as they watched Stella put her impromptu dance routine back together. "But if it's got those two worked up..."

"Sting, what _doesn't_ have those two worked up at one point or another?" Auel groaned. "They both have enough demons to fill a Lovecraft book. I'm gonna worry about it when I have a _reason_ to worry about it and I suggest you do that too."

Auel looked away petulantly, but Sting cast his glance nervously towards the airlock. It might be good enough for Auel, but for him...well, that was just one more thing to worry about.

—

"Emily?"

The word drifted down through the Eclipse's cockpit, and Emily glanced up in surprise to find Lily perched on the cockpit hatch, eyes wide and looking nervous. Emily arched an eyebrow. "What is it?"

"You've been all weird lately," Lily mumbled. "Like you don't wanna talk to anyone."

Emily glanced awkwardly around the Eclipse's cockpit. "I've, uh, had a lot on my mind."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

Emily looked up again, and found that Lily was completely unconvinced—and churning with anxiousness to boot. "What's wrong?"

"Well..." She fidgeted for a moment. "It's just...I thought we were gonna hang out and be friends and stuff. But you're always doing something, or you're always bummed out, and that's no good, 'cuz being bummed out is no fun and it means you can't hang out, and that means I'm..." She trailed off and fear flickered through her eyes for a moment.

Emily blinked. "Oh, no...I'm sorry, Lily, it's just," she waved helplessly at her surroundings, "stuff." She smiled awkwardly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be ignoring everybody."

"But you're still all bummed!" Lily protested. "That's not cool! What's going on, Em?"

Emily sat back with a sigh. "I can't tell you about it, Lily."

"What? Why not?"

"I can't. It's...personal."

Lily arched an eyebrow. "If it's about you and Trojan, everybody already knows."

"Wha—no, it's..." She shook her head. "I can't tell you about it, Lily."

An instant later, Emily regretted saying that, as the hurt feelings hit her like a sledgehammer. Lily backed away with sadness in her eyes.

"Friends don't keep secrets from each other, y'know." And with that, she left, and Emily sighed and put her head in her hands.

—

The _Minerva_'s bridge quietly hummed as the winged warship rushed over the waves, driving south towards the faraway city of Benghazi. All had been quiet on the sensors recently, and for that Meyrin was grateful—as long as it stayed that way.

She glanced up over her shoulder, where Shinn was standing with crossed arms. "Have you ever met Sahib Ashman?"

"I don't know anyone who's met Sahib Ashman," Shinn answered with a shrug. "I hear he had something to do with the _Archangel_ during the Valentine War."

Meyrin leaned forward. "He helped them defeat Andrew Bartfeldt. They should know what they're doing."

"But they've never used mobile suits before."

"All the same..." She shrugged herself. "I trust him—"

Alarms from the sensor board sounded and all eyes turned towards Burt. A moment later he turned towards the rest of the bridge, his eyes wide.

"Heat signature, captain, dead astern. It's the _Charlemagne_."

Meyrin felt her heart drop. How had they gotten behind the ship? Where had they been hiding? She glanced up at Shinn.

"I guess we're going to find out." She turned back towards the front as Shinn raced out the bridge door. "All hands, Condition Red; prepare for combat!"

—

To be continued...


	28. Phase 28: Angel of Nightmares

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 28 - Angel of Nightmares

—

**May 20th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Gulf of Sidra, Mediterranean Sea**

"_Minerva_ still moving southeast at flank speed, captain," the sensor officer reported. "Our mobile suit units have engaged the enemy."

Ivan Danilov sat back with a satisfied smirk. "Then all is going as we planned. Helm, maintain course and speed; weapons control, open fire at will once we enter range. It doesn't matter if you hit them or not, as long as you drive them in front of us."

In the observer's chair off to the side, Gerhardt von Oldendorf skeptically arched an eyebrow. "Drive them where, captain?"

Danilov smiled tightly and gestured up towards the tactical map—at the blinking green oval of the _Charlemagne_, the little winged icon of the _Minerva_, the North African coast...and the green dots of seven Alliance Navy warships lying in wait at Benghazi. "Hounds to the hunters, Director Oldendorf."

Gerhardt remained unconvinced. "You're going to let the Alliance Navy have the honor of destroying the mighty _Minerva?_"

"I don't care who does the job as long as it gets done."

"That's not what I'd expect to hear from a Phantom Pain officer."

"I am no ordinary Phantom Pain officer."

Gerhardt settled back into his chair with a smirk. "I can tell."

Vera stepped forward into the tension. "Captain, intel from Major Ngyuen in Benghazi, reporting increased movements by the Desert Dawn. They may be moving to attack the warships in port."

"That would be complicating," Danilov said with a sigh, and glanced towards the communications console. "Connie, send out orders to the naval squadron in Benghazi. Intel says desert guerrillas are on the move in the city. Tell them to move out of ground attack range immediately."

"Yes sir."

Danilov glanced back up at the map. His mobile suits descending like vultures onto the crippled _Minerva_, his ship bearing down like a bull and hurling a storm of firepower after it, and the _Minerva_ charging straight into the jaws of his trap...everything was falling into place.

But they had survived traps like this before.

—

The Destiny Gundam ducked beneath a sweeping sword stroke from the Crusader Gundam and jetted backwards, wings of light blazing, with the pilot inside glowering at his agile foe. The Crusader followed up with a long-range cannon blast that sent the Destiny scrambling for cover; it fired back with its own cannon, only to see the Crusader arc gracefully over the blast and storm in close for another swordfight.

Shinn jammed the controls back and barely dodged the swing, then rushed towards his nimble adversary and slammed his sword into the Crusader's beam shield. The dark Gundam reeled for a moment and Shinn leveled off his cannon—but the Crusader slapped his shot aside with its beam shield and charged in again, and the swords crashed together.

"Persistent today, are we," he growled.

The Crusader surged forward again and flung the Destiny back. Shinn rocketed up over his enemy's head and leveled off his cannon again, but his blast caught nothing but afterimages, and he threw the Arondight up to deflect another punishing strike from the Crusader's sword. The Crusader swung its sword again, aiming for the Destiny's waist; Shinn jammed his sword into its path and deflected the blow with a bone-jarring crash.

Inside the Crusader, Sven Cal Bayan fought to keep his eyes off the switch to activate the Psyco System. It was power—but it had a price—but it was power...

—

Beam bolts sliced through the air as the CGUE Assault danced amid the storm of firepower offered by a squad of Jet Dark Windams. Inside, Rau Le Creuset glanced back at them, whipped around, and showered them with machinegun bullets—but they merely broke their formation and kept up their stream of firepower.

"Not the ideal form for this battle to take," he grunted, and the CGUE Assault lunged away from another salvo of beam fire, "but I suppose it will have to do..."

The CGUE whirled around again and let loose another wave of machinegun fire. The Windams darted around it and opened fire; Rau darted to the right, letting the blasts sear by, then leveled off his machineguns and fired again. The Dark Windams rocketed apart, but one was too slow, and Rau smirked tightly as the machinegun bullets shredded it and sent its flaming wreckage spiraling into the sea.

"That's a start—" he began.

The CGUE rattled and Rau grunted in pain as he was slammed into the left-hand side of the cockpit. He turned in surprise, only to find an IWSP Dark Windam on the attack, smoke curling from its overhanging cannons—and with mobile black mobile suits on the way.

"Mess with one and the whole hive is stirred up," he snarled, and the CGUE rattled again as more shells slammed into its shoulder shields. "I'll have to lead you into the city to make this work..."

—

Emily grunted in pain as the rattling rang in her ears. These Alliance mobile suits were getting irritating.

Up above, the Gale Strike Gundam hefted its swords and charged down on the attack, and with a series of crashes, it slammed its blades down against the Eclipse's beam sword. Emily seized her chance as the Gale Strike reared back for another blow and ducked beneath its legs—but before she could follow up, a beam blast and a railgun shell shot by in front of her. An instant later the Regen Duel dropped in on top of her, standing atop a sub-wing unit and spewing firepower after the black Gundam. Emily wheeled around, sword in hand, but the Regen Duel darted back—just as a yellow beam coursed through the battlefield and sent the Eclipse reeling behind its beam shield. The Hail Buster flickered into existence on the left side and fired again; Emily rocketed back, drew the Eclipse's beam rifle with her left hand, and opened fire—

Instead, the Nix Providence lunged into the way atop a sub-wing, a sparkling barrier lit up from its oversized right shoulder—and the Eclipse's beams went bouncing away harmlessly.

"What—a positron reflector?"

The alarms screamed and an instinct of danger flashed up her spine; Emily whipped around, beam sword in hand, and swung upward just in time to deflect a downward saber slice from the crimson Nebula Blitz. It kicked forward into the Eclipse's chest with a crash; Emily darted aside to avoid its beam fire, and then roared upward to avoid a salvo from the Regen Duel. And an instant later, the Gale Strike was upon her again with another string of sword blows.

A bazooka shell slammed into the Gale Strike and sent it staggering away amid a cloud of smoke; Emily seized her chance to duck out of the crossfire and catch her breath, and down below, skimming over the ocean's surface, Trojan's green DOM Trooper leveled off its Gigalauncher and rifle for another beam salvo at the five Alliance mobile suits.

"I can't believe you're taking them all on yourself," Trojan muttered—and up above, the five Alliance Gundams broke ranks and scattered again as the Vent Savior shot through their formation in mobile armor mode, plasma cannons blazing.

"Yeah," Lily chimed in, "haven't ya ever heard of teamwork?"

Emily scanned the skies quickly as the enemies charged at her again. "If they're all focused on me, they're not focused on anything else," she grunted—and threw the Eclipse back into the fight.

—

"So here we are again, little Extended girl!" cackled Shams Coza as the Vanguard Gundam bore down on the agile Gaia, beam cannons blazing. "I've been looking forward to this!" The Vanguard charged forward, leveled off its ram cannons, and slammed a salvo of shells into the Gaia's face to send the black Gundam reeling towards the sea. "Got a lot of _aggression_ to take out, y'know!" Shams grinned and pounded another salvo into the Gaia—and then the Artemis lunged forward, beam rifle leveled off—

Abruptly, the smoke ripped apart and the Gaia's splintered shield crashed head-on into the charging Artemis. Mudie flung the ruined shield aside with a snarl—only to find the Gaia blasting over her head, sending the Vanguard staggering back under a hail of beam rifle fire.

"Gotta be difficult, don't ya, bitch?" Shams shouted. The Gaia darted to the left as the Vanguard spewed back a storm of firepower; Shams jerked to the right and fired the Vanguard's rocket anchor forward, but the blades caught nothing but air as the Gaia ducked beneath the blow, then backed away as the Artemis filled the sky around it with beam fire.

"Quit mouthing off and keep her disoriented!" Mudie snapped. "I'll deal with this!" The Artemis roared up after the Gaia, spitting beam fire.

"Who pissed in _your_ coffee this morning?" Shams shot back, and he leveled off the beam cannons to drive the Gaia back. Mudie closed in with a shout and a beam saber drawn in her left hand—

The Gaia whipped around, a saber of its own drawn, and the two Gundams crashed together with a shower of sparks. Shams lined himself up for another blast; the Gaia kicked off its foe's chest and rocketed away as the blasts seared past.

"Mocking me, are you...?" Mudie snarled as she rushed past the black Gundam.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

The _Minerva_ rattled as the _Charlemagne_'s missiles erupted under a hail of CIWS fire, entirely too close to the ship's hull. Meyrin clenched her fists around the armrests. The _Charlemagne_ wasn't trying to shoot them down; it was trying to push them somewhere. But with a kilometer's worth of warship and well over a dozen Gottfried cannons blasting away behind them, there wasn't much choice but to press forward and hope they could punch through whatever would show up in front of them.

The _Minerva_ shook again. "Chen, fire back with the Tristans and Parsifals!" The ship pitched downward as a wave of Gottfried fire flashed by overhead. "And increase power allocation to the heat management systems!"

Abbey cringed as the ship quaked under another near miss, and a stray Gottfried blast seared the ship's port wing. "If they hit us with a barrage like that, laminated armor isn't going to do a thing."

"Then they'll just have to not hit us," Meyrin shot back. The ship rumbled again and Meyrin grimaced at more blasts pounding against the ship—and this time they were railgun shells, the _Charlemagne_ blasting away with its Valiant railguns.

_If we can reach the shore..._

—

**Benghazi, Libya**

Flashes of fire and the rumbling sounds of battle echoed out from the hazy distance. Standing outside Coniel's warehouse, Sahib Ashman cast an anxious glance out towards the horizon. The warships in Benghazi's port had left at top speed and sailed into the Gulf of Sidra; he could still pick out the vague black shapes of their hulls on the horizon, waiting for the _Minerva_ to close in. The trap was obvious. And it would be impossible to change course now.

But, he mused as he looked back towards the warehouse, the Alliance still seemed unaware of one thing. Coniel pulled herself up from the floor on a ladder and got back to her feet.

"Sixty-eight mobile suits total," she grumbled. "That's including those worthless ZuOOTs you insisted on buying."

"Nothing with that many guns attached to it is worthless," Sahib answered, and looked back out to sea through a pair of binoculars. The Alliance squadron was in position, and on the deck of the _Spengler_-class carrier, he could see mobile suits emerging.

"If they're going to fight out over sea, it is," Coniel shot back. "Final tally is twenty-five mobile suits capable of flight. That _Spengler_ can carry thirty-six, and God only knows how many the _Charlemagne_ is packing."

"We have the element of surprise."

"They're not going to be _that_ surprised. They outnumber us two to one at least."

"Fine odds for the Desert Dawn." Sahib lowered his binoculars. "You may not remember it, but my men have fought mobile suits armed only with RPGs and dune buggies. Quit complaining and get your forces ready to attack. If we're lucky we can soften up those warships before the _Minerva_ hits their line."

Coniel scowled and turned back towards the warehouse. "You know, you didn't win that battle against the Desert Tiger," she snapped. "The _Archangel_ did."

Sahib shot her a glare. "I said get moving."

—

A missile streaked by far too close for comfort to the CGUE Assault's head as it pitched through the air with a squadron of heavily armed Dark Windams on its tail. Rau ground his teeth in frustration as another round of shells slammed into the CGUE's shoulder shields—and he frowned as he caught sight of cracks starting to appear in the armor.

"They were empty anyway," he grunted, and whipped around in time for one of the IWSP Windams to charge down towards him, anti-ship swords upraised for a finishing blow. Rau jammed the controls back, the CGUE Assault roared backward with a blast of thruster exhaust, and the Windam's swords sliced down through the CGUE's two shoulder shields—only to find that the CGUE had ejected its shields, and with a crash it drew a beam rifle taken from a GuAIZ and drilled a shot straight through the Windam's cockpit.

Rau scanned the skies for his next target—but before he could react, his instinct screamed within him and he threw up the CGUE's right arm...just as a railgun shell slammed into its shield and shattered it like glass. The CGUE rocketed away from a storm of beam fire from the other Windams, as a Lightning Dark Windam on a sub-wing roared into battle with its electromag cannon leveled off.

"Pulling out all the stops, I see," he grunted. The other Windams fired again, forcing the CGUE on the defensive; Rau switched his rifle to his left hand and with a flourish, he drew the heavy laser sword, a prize from an abandoned ZAFT machine, from its rack on the mobile suit's backpack and lit the blade up. "Well, two can play at _that_ game..."

—

The Nix Providence shrugged off another wave of plasma cannon blasts to its positron reflector and fired back with the beam cannons in its composite shield; up above, the Vent Savior darted to its left to avoid the blasts. And that was all the opening the Hail Buster needed to materialize again and fire off a pulsing blast towards the Gundam Eclipse. The black Gundam flung itself to the side—and then the Gale Strike came down with both its swords.

"And now you're mine!" roared Travis, and the Nebula Blitz charged in from behind with its beam saber lit—

Instead of landing a blow, a bazooka shell slammed into the red mobile suit from below and threw it off course. The Eclipse jerked back for a moment, then slammed the Gale Strike in the face with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick and rocketed over the charging Regen Duel's blasts. Kelly scanned the seas below and found the green DOM Trooper skate past, smoke curling from the end of its Gigalauncher.

"Where the hell did _he_ come from?" Travis snarled; the DOM opened fire again, forcing the Alliance mobile suits on the defensive.

"Forget about him," Kelly ordered. "Push the Midnight higher, out of the DOM's range."

The Vent Savior, not to be forgotten, showered a volley of plasma cannon blasts down onto the Alliance Gundams. Kelly whipped around and activated the positron reflector to deflect them all. The Vent Savior charged in, beam rifle blazing; the Nix Providence darted to the side, just in time to let the Nebula Blitz lunge into the silver mobile suit's path and slap it aside with a heavy saber blow, before charging again after the Eclipse.

—

Stella Loussier flung the straining Gaia Gundam downward, just below a withering barrage of beam fire from the charging Vanguard Gundam. The pale blue mobile suit pulled up and redirected its fire towards the sea; the Gaia darted to the side and fired back with its beam rifle to force the blue mobile suit back—but no sooner had the Vanguard pulled back than the Artemis lunged into the Gaia's path. Stella jammed the controls back, but too late—the Artemis flung a trio of Stiletto anti-armor penetrators into the Gaia's face and sent its foe reeling towards the ocean.

"I won't fall that easily," she snarled; and as the Artemis closed in with its beam rifle raised, she lunged forward and tore it in two with a quick beam saber stroke. The Artemis slammed its knee up into the Gaia's chest, then pounded it with a hard kick to the face; Stella rocketed up and shook her head, her ears still ringing from the blow. The Vanguard followed with a wave of beam fire.

The Gaia ducked beneath the Vanguard's fire, engines roaring angrily; Stella grimaced at the sound and hoped her aging machine would hold out. The Artemis whipped around, beam saber in hand; Stella flung her own blade up, and the two Gundams crashed together with a shower of sparks.

"Just like Neo," she grunted, as the Artemis drove her inexorably back. She glanced over her shoulder and found the Vanguard lining up for a lethal blast to her back. "Won't leave me alone!"

With a hard crash, the Gaia knocked the Artemis back, then whipped around and squeezed off a beam rifle blast that tore through the Vanguard's rifle and blew it apart. The Artemis charged with a sweeping horizontal saber stroke; the Gaia whirled around again to deflect the blow, then took off over the two Gundams' heads.

"But I won't go back!" Stella shouted; the two Gundams closed in, the Vanguard spewing firepower. "Not to _you!_"

—

The Destiny Gundam rattled under a relentless string of sword blows from the furious Crusader. Shinn grimaced at the anger radiating from inside the Alliance machine; he was fighting like a man possessed. But he knew as well what else anger could do.

The Destiny flung itself back and then vaulted over the charging Crusader's vicious horizontal sword swing. Shinn whipped around and ducked beneath the Crusader's long-range cannon blast; the Crusader turned, eyes blazing, sword in hand.

"Well," grunted Shinn, "this is new."

Across the way, seething inside the Crusader Gundam's cockpit, Sven ground his teeth. "This is another pointless battle, Asuka," he said. "You're trapped now."

"Trapped?"

As if on cue, the boom of artillery rumbled out of the horizon—and an instant later, tall white columns of water rushed up around the _Minerva_. Shinn's eyes went wide in surprise; naval gunfire coming from the southeast, from—his hand slammed down the magnification switch and he felt his jaw drop at the sight of Alliance warships and mobile suits on the horizon.

"If you surrender—" Sven began.

"Who said anything about surrender?" Shinn shot back, and the Destiny pointed its sword combatively at the Crusader. "You've still got to take _me_ down, and so far your track record isn't looking very good."

Sven's face darkened and he raised a hand. "Then so be it."

He slammed a hand down on something on the Crusader's console—and an instant later, Shinn's eyes went wide at the strange feeling rippling out from the Crusader's innards. Sven gasped in apparent pain, the Crusader's eyes lit up—and the Gundam charged with its sword drawn back.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"Move your ships in closer, Commodore Aguilar," Danilov instructed. "If we can force the _Minerva_ into a small box of ocean, their maneuverability won't be able to save them."

"In theory," grumbled Aguilar. His screen went dark and Danilov sat back and swallowed the tension in his throat. The _Charlemagne_ had scored a handful of glancing blows so far, but the commodore's squadron had been far more ruthless and the mighty _Minerva_'s prow was cratered with shell impacts. And three dozen Jet Windams hovered over the horizon, ready to move in.

"In theory, yes," mumbled Danilov. He glanced over at Vera. "Send out the order to our MS units to space the _Minerva_'s mobile suits out farther from the ship. We don't want them to move in and intercept our attacks." He turned towards the fire control station. "Ronald, tighten fire vectors. No more driving; it's time to make our kill."

The _Charlemagne_ rumbled as it plunged into battle, and Danilov sat back with his steely gaze fixed on the _Minerva_.

_Now, Captain Hawke, let's see what you'll do..._

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_**, Gulf of Sidra, Mediterranean Sea**

"Surface contact, captain. Seven warships deployed in a line facing northwest." the sonar officer exclaimed on the _Aristotle_'s conn. "Additional mobile suits detected."

Nathaniel and Camwell shared a look. The Alliance's trap had sprung shut.

"There's no way they can survive this," scoffed Camwell. "They're outnumbered fourteen to one." He scowled at the monitor as the _Minerva_ shuddered under a storm of artillery shells. "It's too bad we'll be denied our trophy, though."

"Yes," Nathaniel mumbled, eyes fixed on the screen. Outnumbered fourteen to one. A gigantic warship on its tail and seven more moving in from the front. Its mobile suits scattered and unable to intervene.

"Captain, more mobile suits detected," the sonar officer spoke up. "Twenty-five units detected. They're broadcasting different IFF signals. They look like they're Resistance."

"Twenty-five mobile suits against an armada like this?" Camwell snorted. "They're either brave or crazy. Probably both."

Nathaniel blinked in surprise and glanced up at the tactical map. Twenty-five mobile suits streaming out of Benghazi, attacking into the rear of the Alliance's lines. Their formation broke apart, with most attacking the surface ships but a precious few moving out into the battle. But the Alliance still had overwhelming force. Would this work?

Because if it didn't, then only a miracle would save the _Minerva_.

_I don't need to rethink whose side I'm on,_ Captain Hawke reminded him from the ghostly depths of his memory. _You do._

—

Emily yelped in surprise as a bazooka shell slammed head-on into the Gundam Eclipse's chest and sent her mobile suit reeling. The Gale Strike plowed through the smoke, swords raised high; Emily swung back with a hard blow against the Gale Strike's swords that drove the white mobile suit back.

Trojan and Lily had gone off to protect the ship as the shells fell and the Alliance's noose tightened. It was just as well; against these five Gundams, they were only getting in her way. But, as she flung the Eclipse aside to dodge the pulsing yellow blasts of the Hail Buster's impulse cannon, she was beginning to wonder if that hadn't been a mistake.

The Eclipse rattled and threw Emily forward; she shot a glance over her shoulder and found the Nebula Blitz there, with the huge two claws on its back firmly clamped around the Eclipse's chest. Inside the red mobile suit, Travis Alterman laughed triumphantly.

"Leaving yourself open like that? Bad form, angel chick!" The Nebula Blitz's engines flashed to life and drove the two mobile suits forward. "A mistake like that will cost you, y'know!"

"_Finally!_" cried Erin, and the Gale Strike came roaring down with its swords pulled back for the kill. "_Time to end this!_"

Emily furrowed her brow at the sight of the charging mobile suit—and with a flash of light, the Eclipse's Voiture Lumiere system blazed to life. The Nebula Blitz lost its grip and went flying—and with a devastating upward blow, the Eclipse smacked the Gale Strike aside and then rocketed upward to dodge a furious blast from the Hail Buster.

The Eclipse whipped around to face the black mobile suit; the Hail Buster vanished from sight, replaced by the Regen Duel firing its bazooka. And up from behind lunged the Nix Providence, beam saber ignited—

An instant later, a beam blast lanced between the two mobile suits and drove the Nix Providence back—and a Murasame roared by in mobile armor mode, before arcing upward and showering the combatants with more beam fire.

"What the—is that the Resistance's reinforcements?" breathed Emily, as she seized the chance to catch her breath. The Alliance Gundams pulled back in surprise as the Murasame pounded them with beam fire. And on the auxiliary screen appeared the grim, dusky face of a girl Emily's age, with a look on her face that brooked no disagreement.

"So, the Angel of Death," she said. Up above, a BABI, a DINN, and a Jet Dagger L fell into formation around her, and the four mobile suits arced around for another pass at the surprised Alliance Gundams. "Fighting five high-performance Alliance mobile suits on your own. Tell me, are you crazy, or just stupid?"

Emily frowned. "Nice to meet you, too."

The girl glanced at her wingmen. "Break formation!" she barked; the four mobile suits snapped apart as the Alliance Gundams opened fire again. "The name is Coniel," she said, "now get back in the fight and draw their fire with that fancy Gundam of yours!"

Emily swallowed hard and plunged back into battle.

—

The CGUE's left-hand shield shattered under a punishing blow from a Jet Dark Windam's bazooka, and Rau grimaced as he watched the shards fall into the sea. The other shields could be sacrificed, but he was going to miss that one, he knew.

The CGUE ducked down beneath the Windam's next shot and closed the distance with a roar of thrusters. The Windam backed up; its comrades opened fire to box the CGUE in. Rau licked his lips as he saw his opening, slithered through the blasts, and speared the first Windam through the cockpit with a beam rifle blast—and as it exploded, he whipped around to face a second Windam, dropping in from behind, and drilled a shot through its chest as well.

Another wave of beam fire kicked up and the CGUE dove for the sea, then pulled up and skimmed along the water's surface under a hail of beams. The Windams closed ranks and intensified their fire; the CGUE shuddered as missiles detonated entirely too close to the mobile suit's armor and sent it reeling towards the water.

Rau jammed the controls back up and the CGUE struggled back into the air—where it was surrounded by another wave of beam fire. He fired back with his own rifle, but the Windams merely staggered their formation, the front row deflecting his blasts and giving time to the second row to hurl back a salvo of their own.

"So you're learning," Rau snarled. "King Leonidas would be proud."

—

The Crusader Gundam's blade crashed against the Destiny's Arondight, and the latter mobile suit went reeling towards the sea. Shinn struggled to regain control—but the Crusader was there again and it was all he could do to jam his sword into its path to block its next blow.

"I _hate_ that you're making me use this," snarled Sven, and Shinn blinked in surprise at the furious, fearful quiver in his voice. The Destiny rattled as the Crusader brought down its sword again. "And I _hate_ that you've dredged up this weakness in me!"

Shinn grunted as the sword slammed down again. "Now that is not _my_ fault," he growled.

"And now," Sven went on, "I have to fight this system as well as you!"

The Crusader rammed itself into the Destiny and sent Shinn flailing back—and with a shriek of broken metal and a painful shudder, it sliced off the Destiny's left leg at the knee. Shinn jammed open the thruster and rocketed away, but the Crusader sent two beam boomerangs after it instead—and before Shinn could react, the whirling blades claimed the Destiny's right shoulder armor, the boomerang attached, and ripped two long, smoking gashes into the chest armor.

"This system is what it will take to defeat you," Sven snarled, "and if it comes at the cost of the walls that keep me who I am, maybe you're not worth killing!"

"Dammit," groaned Shinn, "once he draws blood..." He yanked back the controls and barely dodged another sweeping sword strike—but an instant later the boomerangs came whipping back from behind. Shinn threw the Gundam towards the sea and leveled off his long-range cannon; the Crusader dropped in from above with a crash and sliced the barrel in two before he could fire, then slammed its sword against the Destiny's blade and sent it staggering back. It gave chase with a roar of engines and a storm of afterimages, and the two Gundams' swords crashed together again under a hail of sparks.

Shinn blinked in surprise as another feeling washed over him—and the knot of fear pulsing in the Crusader's cockpit suddenly flashed to life like a sickening star. Something seemed to crack around the center of Sven's presence, and a moment later a thousand voices rushed into Shinn's consciousness and the world itself grew fuzzy.

"_Get out!_" roared Sven, and with a tooth-rattling crash, the Crusader smacked the Destiny away and went back on the attack.

—

"The more you fight, the more annoying you get!" snarled Shams Coza, as the Vanguard rumbled and showered the Gaia with firepower. The Gaia danced through the beams and charged, just in time to smack the Vanguard back with a hard beam saber swipe. The Artemis dropped in from behind with a saber stab; the Gaia whipped around and flung its beam rifle into the Artemis's face, and the exploding weapon drove back the green and white Gundam long enough for the Gaia to escape into the air.

"Awfully long-lived, you are," grumbled Mudie, "but your luck will run out sooner or later!" The Artemis lunged up after the Gaia; the black Gundam drew its second beam saber and descended into a furious swordfight with the Artemis. The Vanguard leapt up from behind, cannons leveled off; the Gaia skirted to its left, forcing the Artemis to duck as the Vanguard opened fire.

"Very cute!" Shams snapped. "Get back here!" The Vanguard roared after the Gaia; it backflipped away, over the Vanguard's stream of fire—

An instant later, Shams yelped in surprise and yanked back the controls. Up above, the Gaia had its beam cannons folded down and rained fire down on the blue Gundam. The Artemis vaulted up over the Gaia's head, saber blazing; the Gaia flung itself back to avoid the slash and charged back into its swordfight.

"I thought these things were supposed to lose their tempers and get sloppy," Shams grumbled as he scrambled for an opening.

Mudie ground her teeth as the sparks flashed around her. "Apparently we have the one Extended that's decided to be _different_. Now shut up and cover me."

—

Shuddering under a hail of missiles, the DOM Trooper slalomed its way through a forest of explosions and towering columns of water, and Trojan bit back a curse at the sight of a mobile suit snaking its way towards him. He whipped around, lighting up the beam sabers on the end of his rifle, and blasted through the mist to take by surprise a white and blue Jet Windam. The Alliance mobile suit reared back, beam rifle in hand; Trojan took the opportunity to speed in low under its blasts and slice it in two.

He whipped around at the sound of more fire and ducked away behind his beam shield; up above, another squad of Jet Windams bore in on him with rifles blazing—only to break formation and dart aside as Lily's transformed Vent Savior blasted through their ranks.

"You'd think with reinforcements, this would be going easier!" she snapped, and the Vent Savior sped back into the sky with the Windam squad on its tail.

Trojan blew out a sigh and turned again—this time towards another Windam streaking in low over the sea towards the _Minerva_'s exposed ventral side. He threw the DOM forward and let loose a salvo from the Gigalauncher's beam cannon; the Windam darted aside and two more appeared from above to cover it as it pulled back. Trojan jammed back the controls and, sorely wishing his machine could fly too, took cover behind his beam shield.

_Gonna need a miracle at this rate..._

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Another shell found its mark on the _Minerva_'s cratered hull and the ship shuddered under the blow. Meyrin peered up ahead through the smoke, at the line of Alliance warships pummeling the _Minerva_ with missiles and artillery—and at the Desert Dawn's mobile suits, struggling to break through against an equal number of Alliance Navy Jet Windams holding them back. Sahib simply had too few mobile suits.

The _Minerva_ shook and broke her out of her thoughts. "Portside missile tubes seven, eight, and nine are inoperative!" Chen reported. "We've only got eleven launchers left!"

A wave of green firepower from the _Charlemagne_ seared by and clipped the _Minerva_'s starboard wing. The ship rattled under the blow and began to pitch downwards.

"Malik, course correction! Ascend, forty-five degrees!" Meyrin shouted. Malik yanked back the helm and the ship began to climb—but at far too shallow an angle.

"It's no good," Malik grunted, "levitator power isn't rising."

"What—are the lines damaged?"

"The levitator is getting power," Abbey spoke up, "but we're straining the reactor. We've got to divert energy from the laminated armor."

Meyrin glanced up at the auxiliary screen—where the _Charlemagne_ was barreling after the ship. Cutting power to the heat systems would leave the ship vulnerable, but the reactor was beginning to fail. They had gone too long without major repairs. At this rate...

"Alright," Meyrin breathed, "this is what we'll do. Heat management systems at 75%; remaining power to the Tristans—"

A blinding light flared up to the ship's port side, and Meyrin knew before Chen said so what had happened. "Portside Tristan is hit!"

Abbey pounded a fist on her console. "New plan, captain!"

"Yes," Meyrin agreed, and wondered what her chances were of breaking through the center. "Roxy, contact Sahib, now!"

—

Arcing gracefully through a storm of firepower, Rau Le Creuset's CGUE Assault wormed its way closer to the shore as the Dark Windams poured fire after it. One of them lunged up from behind, beam rifle leveled off; Rau swung the CGUE around and sawed through its waist with his sword, then darted away as the remaining mobile suits opened fire.

He spared a glance back at the _Minerva_. "Breaking through the center, are you?" he grumbled. "Good luck with that." He blinked in surprise as something else touched his senses, and he glanced towards the water. "But there are others here too..."

The incoming fire reclaimed his attention and he sent the CGUE into a steep dive. The Windams spread apart and intensified their fire; Rau jerked back and skimmed along the water's surface, edging closer to the coast.

"In the meantime," he said, as the Windams sharpened their aim, "I'll have to do something about _you_..."

—

"I'm getting really sick of this!" screamed Lily Thevalley as she guided the transformed Vent Savior in between the furious fire of the Windams protecting the Alliance naval squadron. One of them darted to the side and lashed out with its right leg just as the Vent Savior passed, and with an ear-ringing crash, the silver mobile suit tumbled out of the sky. Lily yelped in surprise, transformed the machine back to its mobile suit mode, and took off before the remaining Windams could follow up—but another one forced her back on the defensive with a blazing beam cannon volley from behind. "And that's just cheating!"

Up above, the Windams formed up again and opened fire; Lily knocked them out of formation with a plasma cannon volley, but they simply put the formation back together and shot at her again.

The Vent Savior rocked and Lily snapped her attention downward—just in time to see the warships below launching missiles, and some of them twisting towards her. "Oh, they wanna play too, huh?" She pitched down towards the warships—but stopped short as the Windams threw a curtain of beam fire in her path. "Hey—no fair!"

More missiles and bazooka shells pounded the Vent Savior from above and forced it off course. Lily glared up at the sky, and the second squad of Jet Windams swooping down towards her.

"Jeez, you guys are everywhere!" The Vent Savior darted to the side as the Alliance forces attacked again and went spiraling back down on the defensive.

—

Stella jammed her beam sabers up in a cross over the Gaia's head, just in time to catch the Artemis's sweeping downward hack. Sparks flew for a moment, before the Artemis lunged forward and smashed its knee into the Gaia's torso. Stella grunted in pain as the force slammed her back in her seat—and an instant later, she had to throw the mobile suit towards the sea as the Vanguard lined up behind her and opened fire.

"You just don't give up," Stella grumbled, and then ducked again under the Artemis's furious horizontal slash. She took off low over the ocean surface and fired back at the pursuing Alliance mobile suits with the Gaia's beam cannons, but the blasts impacted uselessly against their beam shields, and their return fire forced her back into the air to weave her way around the shots.

The Artemis vaulted into the air, saber held high over its head. Stella cut the engines and whipped around as the Artemis came back down—and with a resounding crash, the Gaia's left leg lanced out to slam the Artemis's torso and send the Alliance mobile suit reeling. The Vanguard forced the two mobile suits apart with a volley of beam fire; Stella rocketed up over its head and fired from above to drive it back.

"The ship," she breathed, "I have to protect it!" The Gaia shuddered under a near miss from the Vanguard and she turned her attention back to the Alliance Gundams with a scowl.

—

With a scream of rage from its pilot, the Crusader Gundam slammed its sword down hard onto the Destiny's Arondight. Shinn groaned as his ears rang under the blow; Sven was fighting like a man possessed, and the tornado of jumbled emotions whirling around from his presence was not helping in the slightest.

And then there were those jolts of intuition arcing across his consciousness. The shreds of memories and the wisps of identity...he saw a telescope in a boy's hands, he felt the familiar pain and strain of military training, and the pangs of something buried deep—but not deep enough—

The Crusader was upon him again and with a crash, it sliced off the Destiny's left arm at the elbow. Shinn shook his head, but the visions would not go away and he struggled to look past them—long enough to dodge another sword blow from the Crusader.

"I felt you in my mind, Asuka," Sven snarled. "Tell me what that was." Silence answered him, and he pounded the Destiny's blade with his own. "Tell me!" He stormed forward and slammed his sword down over and over again onto the Arondight. "_Tell me!_" The sword came down one last time and blasted its way through the Destiny's sword, sending the ruins clattering down towards the sea. Shinn backed away.

"Those walls you mentioned," he snapped back, "they weren't there. You put them there. And whatever the hell your mobile suit is doing to you took them down." He swallowed hard and hoped this wouldn't end badly—and, as though to prove the point, he had to fling the sparking Destiny back to avoid yet another swing. "So now I know. Under all that bluster is a victim."

Sven's eyes flashed in rage and Shinn winced at the white-hot ball of fury. "_You don't know anything about me!_" he roared. Shinn jammed back the controls but the afterimages swarmed; the instinct raced up his spine and he jerked the Destiny to the side—

...and an instant later, the Crusader brought down its sword in a powerful overhand swing, and the Destiny's beam wings, its head, and its entire right arm went spiraling away. Shinn screamed in pain as the sparks flew and the shrapnel sprayed out—and, belching smoke and sparks, the Destiny's engines cut out and the Gundam plummeted into the ocean.

"No," Sven growled, hands trembling as he watched the carnage, "no, not yet, not 'til I see the body!" He drew the Crusader's Agni Kai cannon and leveled it off, and fought through his blurring vision to aim the weapon. "Not yet! Not 'til I'm sure you're dead!" He blinked furiously at his clouding sight. The walls around him quivered and cracked. "Not...not while you know...!"

The walls came down, all went dark, and the Crusader collapsed into the water.

—

Inside the humming Gundam Eclipse, Emily's eyes went wide at the feeling from across the battlefield. She snapped her attention in its direction—but a moment later, beam fire from the ever-persistent Nix Providence reclaimed her attention. She flung the Eclipse downward, ducked under the combined fire of the Regen Duel and Hail Buster, then swatted aside the charging Nebula Blitz's beam saber and backflipped over the Gale Strike's horizontal scissoring sword swipes.

"Shinn," she breathed, "what happened to him?"

Up above, dodging fire from the Hail Buster, Coniel shot Emily an angry look. "The hell are you sitting there for? Draw their fire!"

Emily threw herself back into the fight and charged towards the Hail Buster. It winked out of existence, replaced by the Nix Providence and its beam-spewing hip-mounted DRAGOONs. The Eclipse lunged to the right, only to have to throw up its beam sword to deflect the twin downward sword hacks of the Gale Strike. And an instant later, the Nebula Blitz leapt up from behind and leveled off its Trikeros—

Then the world shook.

Emily vaulted out of the trap and turned her eyes towards the source—and in disbelief, she watched the Alliance's surface ships crack in two, one by one, and vanish between towering plumes of water and flame. The survivors struggled to turn away, but for each in turn, something underwater rose up to snap them in two and send their flaming remains beneath the waves.

"What the...are they being torpedoed?" Coniel muttered. "Who?"

The answer came with another column of water. A huge winged form burst out of the sea and mobile suits rocketed out of its innards on vertical linear catapults—and Emily blinked in disbelief.

"That giant ZAFT sub," she murmured, "the one from Belém..."

Coniel's Murasame moved in next to the Eclipse. "Friend of yours?"

"N-Not exactly." Emily watched in shock as the ZAFT mobile suits broke formation and opened fire—on the Alliance units, tearing them apart with the element of surprise in their sails. "Are they helping us or just taking an opportunity...?"

Coniel glanced around the battlefield for a moment and heaved a sigh. The dead could be mourned when the job was done. "Either way, I don't intend to stick around long enough to find out. Help me fish survivors out of the sea and then we'll get your ship to safety."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Ivan Danilov could not believe his eyes.

There, lancing through the sky, was a full squadron of ZAFT BABI mobile suits. With lethal precision, they tore apart the stunned and demoralized Alliance forces—regular and Phantom Pain alike. And down below, pummeling the _Charlemagne_ with missiles, was that massive shape that Intel had identified as the submarine that had attacked the Azores base.

Here, in the Mediterranean. They would have had to pass either Gibraltar or Suez to get here. Both were in Alliance hands. How?

"Captain," Gerhardt spoke up, startling him, "it looks like you've got a wildcard on your hands."

Danilov shook his head and cleared away his shock. The attack was beyond salvation—but he could still escape with the surviving men and his ship.

"Connie, message to all units," he said. "Retreat to Malta, maximum speed."

He cast one last look at that massive ZAFT submarine. Were they defecting to the Resistance, were they joining forces with the _Minerva_, were they simply seizing an opportunity to hammer the Alliance?

Or was there a lesson to be learned here?

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_

The conn was deathly silent as the sonar officer logged his report. Nathanial Hatias watched approvingly as the _Charlemagne_, its mobile suits, and the tattered remains of the Alliance Navy's Windam force clawed for distance under the cover of smoke and combat flares. So his little intervention had done its job.

He turned at the sound of a click and blinked in surprise as he stared down the barrel of a gun. He glanced up at the man holding it, and almost grimaced at the fury in Camwell's eyes.

"I hope you know how many regulations you're violating with that thing, Camwell."

"My violations are _nothing_ compared to yours." He scowled and waved at the rest of the room with his free hand. "After all, I'm not the one who's passed up opportunity after opportunity to pursue our mission. I'm not the one who's defied direct orders from Marshal Sunogachi. I'm not the one who's been too weak to do what we all know is necessary to protect our people." He fixed his glare back on Nathaniel. "And I'm not the one who just extended a helping hand to a boatload of race traitors."

Nathaniel was motionless. "You were there too, Camwell, when Captain Hawke told us who need to rethink which side we're on. And I've been doing just that."

Camwell twitched. "So—so you really _are_ a traitor."

"A traitor to what? To the people who want to bring the same grief to the Naturals that they brought to us?" He shook his head. "Right and wrong remain right and wrong no matter where you stand."

"Yes, they do," Camwell said, "and from where I stand, I can understand now—understand how weak you are, how mistaken Command was to put you in charge of this ship." He looked around the conn. "Summon the master at arms, with his sidearm. Pursuant to emergency procedures, I am declaring Captain Hatias unfit for duty and relieving him of command. Put him in the brig."

The conn was silent.

"Well?" Camwell snapped. "Get to it!"

Nobody moved.

"You think I was the only man to rethink the ethics of ZAFT's mission?" Nathaniel asked. He glanced around the conn himself. "You know, the Naturals view us as inhuman enemies. Things to be controlled, and failing that, destroyed. But you," he shook his head, "you're just the same."

Camwell purpled in rage and swung his gun up. A shot rang out—

...and, eyes wide, Camwell pitched backward and landed with a thud.

Nathaniel blinked in disbelief and turned around—to find the _Aristotle_'s weapons officer standing at his post, a smoking pistol in hand. He awkwardly shoved it back into his uniform and lowered his eyes.

"I-I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but...you know what he did..."

Silence hung in the air heavier than the stink of gun smoke and blood. Nathaniel glanced down at Camwell's body with a sigh, then back up at the weapons officer.

"I see we all decided to bring loaded weapons to the conn today," he said at last, and turned around again. "Comm officer, get me a line to the _Minerva_. We have a lot to discuss."

—

To be continued...


	29. Phase 29: Swords in the Sand

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 29 - Swords in the Sand

—

**May 20th, CE 77 - Banadiya, Libya**

The windswept city of Banadiya was one of the results of the Reconstruction War, as workers and refugees clustered here to escape violence in the larger cities of the Mediterranean coast—and wound up turning Banadiya into a major city as well. It had been Andrew Bartfeldt's headquarters during the Valentine War and his old HQ complex still stood, albeit in disrepair, in what had otherwise turned into a slum.

And, as Meyrin Hawke idly reflected, sitting in the backseat of a jeep speeding down the dusty streets, it was now one of Sahib Ashman's strongholds.

The _Minerva_ was in the port, the mechanics hastily repairing what damage they could, but the next course of action was all too clear. The trip down the Nile, skirting past Khartoum and over the Ethiopian highlands to reach the Somali coast, would be a dire test...but there was no other option to get the wounded ship past the Suez canal and the base at Socotra. At least Gigafloat was coming to meet them.

And then there was the Destiny. That one made Meyrin's stomach churn. Shinn had answered their hails, at least, so Stella had taken the Gaia into the deep to dig him out of the sediment and raise his ruined machine to the surface. But even her underwater survey had confirmed that the mighty Destiny, the Resistance's wings of light, was beyond repair. And Shinn...well, those images of his bloody face didn't make her feel any better.

She snapped herself out of the worry at the sound of Sahib's gruff voice. The captain could show no fear—least of all in front of this man.

"He's waiting in the old ZAFT HQ," Sahib explained. Meyrin blinked up ahead, at the dilapidated building with a faded ZAFT logo over the front gate. The Desert Tiger had made this place his base of operations during the Valentine War and docked his land battleship here; now it was the Desert Dawn's home, at least until the Alliance caught on.

"I wasn't expecting his assistance," Meyrin said quietly.

"Neither were we. But Tariq thinks he's being sincere, at least, so take that for what it's worth." The jeep came to a stop and its occupants hopped out—and Meyrin felt her stomach tighten as she noticed a whole lot more of Sahib's heavily-armed fighters than she knew had been there form a tight circle around Sahib and his guest. Up ahead, a pair of double doors swung open and a man in that familiar blue ZAFT overcoat stepped into the light.

Meyrin swallowed the rest of her emotions as Nathaniel Hatias stepped into the light. The man from the giant ZAFT submarine at Fernando de Noronha seemed almost contrite as he stepped forward and extended his hand.

"You were right, Captain Hawke," he said. "I wasn't on the right side."

Meyrin looked down at his hand, then back up at him—and after a moment's hand, took it for a warm handshake. "Well," she replied, "you are now."

—

With a final, miserable shudder, the maimed remains of the defeated Destiny Gundam crashed down onto the beach, with the Gaia Gundam falling to one knee to keep the ruined hulk from toppling over completely and obstructing the cockpit hatch. The Destiny gave one more spasm of movement from its body and then slumped backwards, dead at last.

The various Desert Dawn operatives and Resistance personnel watching turned away or found some way to pay their respects. Every sword broke at one point or another, but still...

Stella sprinted to the Destiny's cockpit the instant her feet hit the ground and impatiently watched the hatch swing open—to reveal a bloodied and battered Shinn Asuka slumped in the cockpit seat. She pulled him out as gently as she could and let out a sigh of relief that he was still breathing.

"What happened to Shinn?" she asked softly.

Shinn smirked back through the pain. "I lost."

"Will Shinn be okay?"

"If you get me to the infirmary, yeah." He tried to get to his feet, but after a wave of nausea hit him like a fist, he decided against that and leaned heavily against Stella. She lowered them both on the zip line to the sand.

"Well," someone else added, to Shinn's surprise, "this wasn't how I expected to find you, Asuka."

Shinn and Stella turned towards the speaker, and found a tall, muscular man in a green ZAFT flight suit—and over his shoulder was the kneeling, green form of the Proto Abyss.

"Alec Ladd," he said with a smirk.

"H-Hi," Shinn grunted, and put his head back down. Stella gave the taller man a quick glare as she shouldered past him, heading for a jeep nearby to take them back to the _Minerva_.

"I suppose this means we won't be settling our little fight," Alec said over his shoulder. Shinn grunted and shot back as cocky a smirk as he could manage.

"Oh, just wait for me to heal up."

Alec smirked back. "That I will."

—

Standing amid the dusty grounds of Banadiya's port, Emily von Oldendorf wished she had been able to drive off those five Alliance Gundams and gotten back to the _Minerva_—because the dark gray armor, cratered with artillery and missile damage as it was, looked like it sorely could have used help.

Trojan stood next to her with his hands stuffed in his pockets. "At least everyone's still alive," he offered.

"What about Shinn?"

"Lacerations and bruises and stuff, but he'll live."

Emily closed her eyes. Of course, the Resistance's symbol, the Destiny Gundam, had been a casualty here. That wasn't coming back. And if that symbol of the Resistance was gone, then it would fall to her to take up the mantle.

She could already feel the weight bearing down on her. At least until Shinn Asuka could return to the battlefield in his fancy Gundam with its distinctive wings of light, the _Minerva_'s defense and the Resistance's torch would be in her hands, and she hated that. At least before, she always knew that he was out there and had the experience and skills to take care of things if they went wrong. But now she would be on her own.

"You okay?" Trojan asked, and Emily blew out a sigh.

"It's nothing."

"I'm not buying that."

"Really. It's nothing." She turned away, and blinked in surprise at the sight of someone approaching—someone with a familiar presence.

Coniel Almeta came to a stop in front of Emily with her fading jacket slung over her shoulder. She glanced over the red-haired girl with a stern, disapproving look, and Emily squirmed under her gaze for a moment before she spoke. "I was expecting the Angel of Death to look..." Coniel paused and searched for the word. "Deathlier."

Emily shrugged. "Sorry?"

Coniel's eyes flicked towards Trojan for a moment before she stuck out her hand for an uneasy handshake. "Coniel Almeta," she said. "We've already met, but I don't believe I've met your buddy here."

"T-Trojan Noiret," he supplied.

"The kid who trained under Barry Ho?"

"Yeah..."

Coniel looked impressed for a moment. "Well, maybe you guys aren't so helpless after all." She glanced over towards the ship, and that impressed look of hers faded away. "Or maybe you are."

Emily frowned. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I call it like I see it," answered Coniel. "We will cover the holes in your ship's defenses for as long as you're in port in Banadiya. But it had better not be long."

With that, she turned on her heel and strode away, leaving a chastened Emily and Trojan in the dust.

—

Viveka cringed at the sight of the damage as she stood on the _Minerva_'s external deck and looked towards the bow, with Athrun nearby. The ship's portside fin on the bridge tower was gone, as was the larger fin to the bridge tower's side, and the portside Tristan was a hunk of twisted metal, fused into a useless lump. The last time the _Minerva_ had been this badly beaten had been...

Well, it had been Terminal, which wasn't really that long ago, so Viveka idly figured this was really just par for course for the mighty _Minerva_.

Athrun looked decidedly less at ease, and Viveka had her guesses as to why. No doubt he somehow felt responsible for this—stupid, really, when he didn't have a mobile suit or any way of altering the battle's outcome—but she could understand the mounting frustration of powerlessness. It was a strange position to be in, pining for a weapon so she could have a purpose again, but it couldn't be helped. Not yet. Not until they reached Gigafloat.

She glanced over at him again and risked a conversation. "So what are we gonna do now?"

Athrun leaned tiredly against the rail. "Get as much fixed as we can here in the next couple days and then run like hell to the Somali coast."

"The Somali coast? In range of Socotra?" Viveka frowned at the thought. The Horn of Africa had once been infested with pirates, preying on the vast merchant shipping traffic exiting and entering the Red Sea; the sprawling naval base on Socotra had put an end to _that_, but not without presenting other problems.

"It's as far north as Gigafloat can go to meet us." He shook his head. "If we can get down there, that is. We'll have to cross the Sudanese desert and the Ethiopian highlands. And Somalia. The coast might be secure but the interior is in chaos."

Viveka glanced awkwardly back at the _Minerva_'s ruined Tristan. "Did you talk to anyone about loaning us mobile suits?"

"Yes," Athrun said, and the way his fists clenched around the railing made the answer clear. "They said they can't spare any."

"Figures."

"Well," added Athrun, "now that they've revealed that they operate mobile suits, they'll probably be attracting greater Alliance attention. So it's not like they won't need them..." He trailed off uncomfortably. "More than us, I guess."

Viveka looked back out towards the ship indignantly. What Athrun said made sense in the ticking, logical part of her head...but that didn't mean the rest of her had to like it.

Because the rest of her had no idea how much longer she could tolerate this powerlessness.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Mediterranean Sea**

Gerhardt von Oldendorf looked on in annoyance as Captain Danilov received his after-action report. Four of the ship's mobile suits shot down, another three damaged, with nothing to show for it. Now the good captain was on his way back to Malta with his tail between his legs to drop off the wounded, before returning to Athens to think of a new plan of attack.

Not that Gerhardt had really harbored any great expectations for this attack. After all, he had actually been there to observe the battle and watched with only the most modestly contained of delight as his erstwhile daughter did battle with five high-performing Actaeon Industries machines. Once again the best lie was the truth.

Her powers had developed so well. No ordinary pilot could hold off five high-end mobile suits with five competent pilots so effortlessly. In that regard the project was a success—so he had only to reach out his hand and retake that which was rightfully his own.

And that little bit of intelligence on the flash drive in his left breast pocket spoke well to _that_. Her talents as a pilot had developed quite well; now her mental stability would be put to the test, and the scientist in Gerhardt could not wait to see how many whacks her sanity could take before it would crumble.

On the other hand, there were..._obstacles_. "Blasphemer" was what Marshal Markav had called him, something about pretending to God's throne or whatever, Gerhardt had largely tuned her out once he had the information he wanted. But chess with Rau Le Creuset could only prove to be an entertaining challenge, and if Markav's little addled mind was uncharacteristically on target, everything would slide into place easier than Gerhardt expected.

And that, really, was how he liked it.

—

The darkness was pierced first by the stale smell of antiseptic and the feeling of cold cloth. Next came the hearing, filled with the low hum of machinery. At last, Sven Cal Bayan cracked open an eye—and instantly regretted it.

Standing over him with the ship's doctor and two orderlies, Yukiko smiled approvingly. "You recovered in the same timeframe as an Extended. Impressive."

Sven tried to sit up, and as his head swam, he quickly discovered that he was not exactly "recovered." Yukiko gave no appearance of noticing or caring as she turned away, consulting a tablet.

"You'll be pleased to know," she continued, "that the reports are in. You shot down the Destiny Gundam. Based on the damage you inflicted, our engineers believe it will be impossible for the Resistance to repair it. So," she grinned, "congratulations. You won."

Sven put a hand over his eyes. No he hadn't. The Destiny hadn't exploded; it was more than conceivable for Shinn Asuka to still be alive. And after that little intrusion of his, that was well and truly unacceptable.

_He saw me, y'know,_ the little boy spoke up. _He knows. He knows I'm in here. He knows you haven't buried me—because you don't want to. He knows._

Sven squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, he knew, he had seen into his soul with the walls broken and those damned Newtype senses. And by shedding light on it, it had started to grow, started to claw its way out of the ramparts he had built around it. He pushed it down with all his strength, but it was not enough. Years of solitude had made it stronger.

_You never got rid of me for a reason, Sven,_ the boy added. _And you can't get rid of me now._

Sven sat up again slowly and looked up blearily at Yukiko. "If I destroyed the Destiny," he said quietly, "then I don't need to use the system again."

Yukiko looked crestfallen. "I suppose."

He closed his eyes again, head down, and knew it would not be enough.

—

"So," Merau said with as cheerfully forced a grin as she could manage, "how's your girlfriend?"

Slumped against the cockpit jamb of the silent Hail Buster, Grey glanced over to the cockpit seat, where Merau was supposed to be working on the operating system but apparently had decided that making fun of him was a more productive activity. "Aren't you supposed to be working on that thing?"

"Scan's running."

"Oh, yeah, sure."

"So? You should probably wait until we get leave to take her out somewhere, the galley makes for a shitty place for a first date."

Grey sighed heavily and crossed his arms. "Seriously Merau, just no." He shook his head. "They did say at Volkov that attachments like that were stupid, 'cuz you had no idea who in your unit would be coming back at the end of the day."

Merau frowned at looked back at the screen. "That's true."

"Besides," he went on with a smirk, "can you imagine the shit I would get for it? Alterman would never leave me alone. Lieutenant Maynard would probably bitch at me about it. Jesus, it'd be awful."

"What, you don't want to get made fun of?" Merau scoffed.

Grey's smile faded. "Yeah," he said, "among other things."

—

**May 21st, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, orbit of Earth**

As the smoldering wreckage of that latest convoy of cargo ships drifted into the vast cloud of the Debris Belt, Lyle Markus sat back on the _Fortuna_'s bridge with an airy sigh. Another day, another bunch of targets that hadn't been nearly as satisfying to kill as Lyle had hoped.

It was starting to wear thin. Soldiers were supposed to do their duty, but they were also supposed to fight, and these space convoys that still tried to brave the threat of ZAFT attacks did nothing of the sort. This one hadn't even had the benefit of Alliance warship protection. Just four freighters, led by a hulking _Marseille III_, all of them torn apart effortlessly by the _Fortuna_'s guns.

But the Alliance had not struck back in force. That worried Lyle, deep in the pit of his stomach. Messiah was surely a tempting target at Lagrange Point 5, with only the shoal zone and a skeleton fleet to defend it. Instead Lord Djibril had evidently settled on a different strategy, one of picking off the ZAFT fleet piecemeal as it plied the Earth Sphere, so that eventually, Messiah would have the shoal zone and the skeleton fleet—and nothing else. Copernicus had been a fine opening shot in this war, but ZAFT would need another—and soon.

But that was the encouraging thing. Behind a Mirage Colloid screen deep in the shoal zone laid the second shot—the finishing one. The ZAKU Goliath was complete and undergoing testing in the shoal zone. With that and the Newtype battery unit, it would be an unstoppable force, but the latter would need testing as well. Then, together, they would end this war, and dictate the terms of their new world.

That was what lay in the future, but this was the present, and in the present Lyle was watching the Earth's gravity claim the wreckage of his latest kill as the mobile suits returned to the ship—and, impatiently clenching and unclenching his fists, it was starting to get old.

—

The VaROZ's cockpit was silent as the silver mobile suit cruised back towards the waiting _Fortuna_. That was bad, because with silence and waiting for landing clearance, Kara Guinness had time to do nothing but think—and these days, thinking usually brought her nothing but grief.

Gary and Juarez weren't on very friendly terms with her anymore. She could deal with that from Gary; stupid Martian bastard had no idea what anything here meant.

But Juarez, that was harder to swallow. She knew his story: his entire family, blown away on October 6, himself left in a damaged mobile suit at Solomon's Sword to join ZAFT's exodus from the Earth Sphere. It was so much like her own story, so why didn't he understand?

But he did. That was the worst part. He understood why she was so angry, and why she couldn't just accept living in exile on Mars or just claiming a spot in the Earth Sphere and leaving it at that. He understood why she had to strike back. They had taken her entire world from her. Her mother and father on Maius 2, her sister, her dog, her boyfriend, her home, the graves of her grandparents...all of it, ashes. He knew that pain. He had his own.

So why was she on this path alone?

She closed her eyes and thought back to what he'd said. Gary had told her not to become a monster, and when she opened her eyes and looked at the wreckage she had created, she felt the sickening feeling that maybe he was right creep up her throat.

—

Kira Yamato watched stonily as the wire-grid schematics of the ZAKU Goliath spun lazily on the screen in front of him. The 261-meter-tall behemoth had a beam shield derived from the one on Messiah, a miniaturized version of Messiah's NEO-GENESIS cannon, and enough conventional armaments to stop a fleet in its tracks. It was inconceivable that this thing would not land on the Earth's surface and do its work.

That, he decided, was the worst part. Valentine had crafted a plan that could not fail. The ZAKU Goliath would land and the Earth itself would bleed before its work was done. And he, Kira Yamato, the man to whom so much had been entrusted, would be responsible for it.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. At his side, Kayla stopped her report in alarm. "Sir...?"

"It's nothing," he answered. "Go on."

Kayla looked unconvinced, but took up her tablet again. "There, um, there is a problem on the Earth, sir," she said nervously. "All our surface units have lost contact with the _Aristotle_."

Kira blinked. "The _Aristotle?_"

"The submarine with the silent drive. When it last reported in, it was in the Mediterranean, pursuing the _Minerva_. But its next report is nine hours overdue, and..." She trailed off. "Well, sir, one of the spies in the Mediterranean reported seeing them in dock at Banadiya, at Commander Bartfeldt's old command center."

Kira frowned, and pushed down the memories those words brought back. The eccentric desert warrior, the hard-bitten guerrillas, Fllay's warm lips against his... "What were they doing in the Mediterranean in the first place?"

"We don't know, sir."

"What about Banadiya? The old command center?"

"It's...a Resistance stronghold now, sir."

Two and two went together. "So he defected."

Kayla swallowed nervously. "So it would seem, sir."

He leaned forward with a sigh. "Inform every unit on Earth. We'll wait and see if the _Aristotle_ leaves the Mediterranean. If they do, destroy them."

"Yes sir."

Deep inside, he knew that Captain Hatias had probably had his fill of evil, and rightly so—but he pushed that part down deeper. Even if he had to be evil, he would build something new, something better, of this world. For her sake.

Kayla quietly excused herself, leaving Kira alone with his memories.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Al Kufrah, Libya**

"I gotta say," the _Seraphim_'s chief mechanic said with a heavy sigh, "this thing is less of a mobile suit and more a whole lot of ordnance skating along the ground in perfect formation. It's gonna be a bitch to handle."

Arms crossed, standing on the gantry in front of the hulking mobile suit, Lilith Ramsi looked it over approvingly. The mighty CaVAL would require an adjustment to her usual piloting style, but this goliath—the general body of a GINN Assault with the ZuOOT's shoulder mounted cannons, the GAZuOOT's beam cannons on its left arm along with the triple machinegun, the GuAIZ R's railguns, the chest-mounted missile launchers of the DINN, and the two "Pardeus" missile launchers on its bulky legs—would be more than enough to stop whole squads of mobile suits with a torrent of firepower. And the two "Falcone" missiles being mounted in their racks on the right arm would give it anti-warship punch.

"I'm sure it will be fine," she said absently.

Lilith glanced to the mobile suit's right. The sleek and knightly close-combat CaZEL would surely need the support.

Silently, she almost hoped the _Minerva_ would just get blown away in an air raid or something by the Alliance. Not with the way Varder had been about that damned ship lately, and its little Angel of Death. Of course her continued insistence on surviving and thwarting his plans to advance up the ranks was frustrating—but it was starting to seem like he was losing sight of the real mission. She wouldn't be a factor for long.

And he was starting to drift away from her as well, Lilith mused. That was even more troubling. She looked back up towards the CaVAL—and hoped it would do the job.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Banadiya, Libya**

"Finally got yourself all messed up, huh?"

Shinn Asuka cracked his eyes open in his entirely too comfortable infirmary bed at the sound of a familiar voice, and blinked blearily at Meyrin Hawke, standing over him with a smile that seemed to be one part concern and one part amusement.

"Yeah, well," Shinn shrugged—and then winced as he remembered the shrapnel wound on his shoulder, "in every charmed life a little rain must fall."

"I'm sure you heard by now," Meyrin went on, smile fading, "that they can't salvage the Destiny."

Shinn's mood darkened at that thought. "Yeah," he mumbled, "so...I heard." A flood of memories washed over him, not all of them good—because, after all, he had first acquired the machine in a vortex of grief and anger in Antarctica. And just as it had lifted him up to manifest his fury and bring it down onto Kira Yamato and the Freedom Gundam in that debacle of a battle, it had carried him to greatness in this debacle of a war. But now it was gone—shattered under the superior technology of an evolving foe.

_Well, childish things and all._

"It can be replaced," Shinn said with the facial expression equivalent of a shrug, "once we reach Gigafloat."

Meyrin nodded, and put her hand on Shinn's uninjured shoulder. "And at least you're still here."

Shinn reached up to squeeze her hand reassuringly, and for a moment, he noticed the flicker of emotion in her eyes—and the jumble of feelings within her. She tried to bury it so much, because the captain had to be levelheaded—and because this war always found ways to hurt people who tempted its cruel caprice—but still it burned.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said with a smile.

Meyrin blinked away the tears rising at the edges of her eyes and smiled back. "Of course."

—

The beach was silent but for the rumble of the sea as a man in white robes with a long, bushy beard packed up the most beautifully bound book Emily had ever laid eyes on. The ragged fighters of the Desert Dawn remained clustered around the ridge above the beach's sands, over a handful of posts and mounds of earth pointed to the east.

She glanced over at Coniel, standing solemnly by the graves of those Desert Dawn pilots who had died in the battle, but her emotions were an unreadable cloud. She finally glanced over at Emily. "We lost some good men yesterday," she said quietly. "Some of our best."

Emily had nothing to say and merely turned her eyes back towards the graves.

"Well," Coniel added, "I suppose that's nobody's fault." She looked towards the clear morning sky. "God takes those who God takes."

Following her gaze, Emily fixed her eyes on a wisp of cloud overhead. Her mother, Kyali, Aza, Isaac, Rax, Anori...and of course, the ones she had killed herself. And yet it wasn't God who had taken them.

Rau's words echoed back into her mind. It would be worth it if all that killing and sacrifice created a better world than this one, right?

"I'm sorry," she said. Coniel blinked. "For...them."

Coniel was silent a moment. "Don't be." She turned away and started making her way down the ridge, with Emily tagging along awkwardly. "Only thing you need to worry about is keeping Banadiya safe until your ship can leave. The Desert Dawn can't do it alone." She glanced back up at Emily. "That's how you can honor them."

With that, Coniel headed back down the slope, and Emily glanced back over her shoulder at the graves, lost in thought.

—

A ticking counter marked off each mobile suit bested in battle flew over the mobile suit simulator. With an approving look about him, Rau watched the accompanying screen, where a computer-generated simulacrum of the yet-to-be-built Fujin Gundam was tearing apart a team of Alliance Windams with its four gunbarrels. Of course, the designs could change and might render moot any training to be gained here, but at least it got Sting and Auel back into mobile suit combat after nearly a month out of the saddle.

Nearby, Auel glanced up impatiently at the screen. "He's cheating."

Rau smirked. "That would imply there are rules."

"There is a rule. I'm better than him. And he's breaking it."

Sure enough, Sting's kill count was about three—no, four higher than Auel's had been when he had taken the simulated Marduk Gundam through the enemy spread. "That's not cheating. That's just incentive to do better."

"You just don't know the rules."

Rau chuckled. "Evidently not."

—

With a loud crash, the second "Pardeus" missile launcher clamped down onto the DOM Trooper's left leg. At the crane controls, Vino Dupre sat back with a satisfied sigh and retracted the arm. Next someone would check the connections, but that was somebody else's job, so Vino took the opportunity to lean back against the railing for a few moments' rest.

That was not to be, because Trojan Noiret was there too, looking over the DOM awkwardly. He looked tired—and as well he should, he'd spent all day with the rest of the crew attaching sand filters to the mobile suit's joints and intakes. Those hover jets in the leg skirt armor were a pain to work with.

"So is this thing almost ready?" Trojan asked tiredly, and Vino only scoffed.

"The legs are ready," he said, "but you still have to shore up the upper body. All kinds of gunk can still get in there." Trojan instantly looked crestfallen and Vino shrugged. "If it makes you feel better, you'll be getting more of the action. We'll have to fly low to avoid radar scans. So all this fitting for desert combat is gonna pay off."

"I hope so," Trojan mumbled, and then got back to his feet with a weary sigh and ambled back towards the service lift.

Vino watched him go with a tired look of his own. Poor kid wanted to do everything, as though it would impress Emily. And Emily was off brooding on her own problems, so his efforts seemed doomed to failure.

He shook his head and glanced back down at the DOM, being readied for the next batch of sand filters. Giant robots were far easier to deal with.

—

The infirmary door slid shut and Stella Loussier cast an anxious glance at it over her shoulder. She wasn't allowed in there right now, since they were putting Shinn into surgery again. She didn't know why, but the doctor had assured her that it would help him get better—and then he'd kicked her out.

Stella stuffed her hands in her pockets in defeat and glanced down at Lily, who looked similarly annoyed at her side. "I wasn't gonna take anything," she grumbled, "I just wanted to see what a bone saw looks like."

"They said Shinn would be okay," Stella mumbled, and turned to head off down the corridor.

"Well, yeah," Lily said. "Don't you trust them?"

"Y-Yeah..."

"Then what's the problem?" She paused and then broke out into a devious grin. "Oh, I get it."

Stella paid it no mind as she rounded a corner with a giggling Lily in tow. It wasn't really any good. Shinn had been hurt—which meant no one had been around to protect him. And if he was hurt, that meant he couldn't protect her...but more importantly, it meant that he needed to be protected more than ever. And there were even fewer mobile suits around. She would just have to do more.

She straightened up as she turned and headed for the mobile suit hangar. _Stella won't let you down, Shinn._

—

**May 22nd, CE 77 - Banadiya, Libya**

Shuddering to a halt on the concrete outside the Banadiya port, Meyrin wearily pulled herself out of the jeep with Sahib and a handful of his men. The Desert Dawn was out in force, and only after her trips around the city had she realized that while its mobile suit force was modest, Sahib nonetheless had thousands of fighters at his disposal. The years of battle with ZAFT in the Valentine War and the Alliance in the Junius War and this interminable struggle had forged a professional guerrilla operation out of the ragtag band that the _Archangel_ had met years ago.

It was reassuring—but only a little.

"God willing, we'll be able to get you out of here by tomorrow afternoon," Sahib said. "None of my scouts have reported any significant Alliance activity so far, but," he frowned, "we did lose contact with a buggy that had gone southeast on recon. We sent another after them. It might just be interference or bad equipment, but at any rate, don't dawdle."

"Alright." She offered a grateful smile. "Thank you, for everything, Sahib. We—"

A quiet rumble echoed out of the horizon. Sahib whipped around sharply, eyes scanning the southeast—but an instant later there was a thundering explosion and a shockwave that threw everyone in the port to the ground. Meyrin turned around, eyes wide, towards the _Minerva..._and the smoking crater in its prow where the Tannhäuser used to be.

"Was that a bomb?" one of the fighters asked, as he helped Sahib back up.

"No, that was artillery," Sahib said. Meyrin leapt back to her feet, heart racing. "Captain Hawke, get to your ship. I think we can tell what happened to that buggy."

Meyrin nodded and sprinted towards the ship while Sahib and his men ran for cover, she and yanked out her headset along the way. "Bridge, this is Meyrin, what happened in there?"

Roxy's sputtering voice answered after a moment. "No idea! We got hit by something that took out the positron cannon, and now we have mobile suits on our radar from the southeast!"

"What is their IFF?"

"ZAFT. What the hell is going on?"

Meyrin spared a quick look towards the horizon—and the sound of mobile suit engines rippling out from the distance.

"We should have known they wouldn't let us go too," she muttered. "Scramble the mobile suits and prepare for combat!"

—

Varder Ehrmacht grinned at the hum of the sleek and knightly CaZEL's engines as the green mobile suit soared into battle. The swords, heat rods, and flight pack of the GOUF Ignited, the shoulder-mounted beam cannons of the ASH, and the extensional arrestors of the GuAIZ would make this thing a formidable foe in close quarters—exactly where he worked best.

And it was even better. The spies in Benghazi had sent out word of the _Aristotle_'s treachery. If they too were at Banadiya, or could be drawn into the battle, then they too would be prey for the ZAKU Ranger—and for that _other_ toy Esram was packing.

Varder squinted up ahead at the forces arrayed against him, then glanced down at the hulking CaVAL, speeding along the dust towards Banadiya. "Lilith," he said, "hardened enemy position. Let's go introduce ourselves."

"Roger that."

The two mobile suits blasted forward, with four of the _Seraphim_'s red ZAKU mobile suits riding Guuls behind them. The CaZEL dipped down low over the sands and let loose a withering barrage of beam cannon fire. Two mobile suits up ahead, a Dagger L and a dusty GINN, staggered away from the barrage. A handful of vehicles and mounted weapons surrounding a stumpy, dilapidated building let fly an answering salvo of machinegun rounds and missiles —just in time for the CaVAL to fire its two "Falcone" missiles straight into the building's lowest floor. The explosion scattered the enemy forces, and the CaVAL mercilessly rained shellfire on them from its two dual cannons. The CaZEL swept down, beam sword lighting up in its right hand, and in a moment it chopped the GINN in two. The Dagger L darted in from behind, beam carbine in hand; the CaZEL whipped around, wrapped its left-hand heat rod around the Dagger's torso, yanked it close, and sliced it in half at the waist.

Varder's eyes darted around the battlefield eagerly. "Come on, where are you..."

A nearby building burst upward and a burst of shellfire ripped out from the smoke. Varder flung the CaZEL towards the ground, beam shield active, as a Duel Dagger in its heavy Fortrestra armor vaulted onto the street. It whipped up its beam rifle—but then it threw its shield up just in time to see its entire left arm blown away by a pulsing beam cannon volley from the CaVAL. Varder licked his lips and dove forward, and with a single backhanded sword swing, the Duel Dagger collapsed in a flaming heap at the CaZEL's feet.

"Cooper's sighted the _Minerva_," Lilith spoke up. "Port, four klicks northwest."

"Nowhere to hide now," Varder chuckled. "Let's go—"

Another volley of beam fire interrupted him and sent both mobile suits darting for cover. Varder shot his gaze up towards the sky—and broke into a grin as he saw two shapes approaching. One was a Murasame in mobile armor mode, but the other...

"There you are, angel girl," he hissed, and the CaZEL lunged into the sky and took off with a roar.

"Varder, wait—!" Lilith shouted, then sent the CaVAL darting away under fire as Varder charged towards the Angel of Death.

—

Explosions ripped up across the ground as the Gaia Gundam rushed in low over the desert floor, dodging beam fire from a squadron of determined ZAFT BABIs. The one in the lead abruptly transformed and leveled off its chest cannon—only for the Gaia to storm forward and run a beam saber through its waist. Stella darted aside as it exploded and fired back at the remaining three mobile suits with her beam rifle, forcing them all on the defensive. Down below, a trio of black shapes was on the move—a Kerberos BuCUE Hound in front of two ordinary BuCUEs, speeding over the sands, straight towards the city.

The Gaia slammed down in front of them; they immediately leapt to their feet and galloped towards her, fangs flashing to life. From the city, a team of the Desert Dawn's few remaining mobile suits rose to their feet to open fire and force the ZAFT mobile suits to break their formation. Stella frowned as she watched their approach, seeking an opening—

...and suddenly the Gaia sprang forward, beam saber flashing to life, and then somersaulted over the Kerberos BuCUE's furious beam fire. She slammed back down in front of the charging mobile suit and ducked to the side—and with a painful shriek of torn metal, the BuCUE continued on through the beam saber and exploded on the other side.

The remaining two BuCUEs jerked to the sides and tried to open fire on the kneeling Gaia, only for the black Gundam to leap off one foot into the air and blast off towards the BABIs as they put their formation back together. The Desert Dawn mobile suits opened fire; a BABI and a BuCUE went down in flames. A second BABI ducked away from its comrade, weapons blazing; Stella ground her teeth as she charged; the sound of artillery rang out from the horizon and she instinctively jerked the Gundam to the side—

And then everything stopped, as something slammed into the Gaia from below. Something powerful. The Gaia sailed back and Stella screamed in pain as she was slammed into the cockpit seat—and then the Gaia crashed heavily back into the ground. Stella groaned in pain and clutched her bloody head, and realized in mounting fear that the Gaia's entire right side was in tatters, its right leg blown away at the knee, its right arm and head completely gone, and nothing else responding.

A dark shadow fell over the battlefield, and inside the dwarfed and maimed Gaia, Stella looked up in disbelief at the shadowy form blocking out the midday sun. A red light flashed to life at its top—and then it came down with a massive, bone-rattling crash.

Stella swallowed nervously at the sight of the massive machine, standing at least twice as tall as the Gaia, with a gigantic cannon looming over its shoulder. A smaller cannon fired a pulsing green beam into the Gaia's left shoulder before it could react and blew off its remaining arm, and then the beam cannon ticked towards the Gaia's cockpit.

"Stella!" a voice screamed—and with a blaze of light, the DOM Trooper threw itself into the path to deflect the hulking machine's shot with its beam shield. "Desert Dawn, get the Gaia back to the _Minerva!_"

"Trojan," Stella murmured, and then slumped back painfully, while a Dagger L jogged up from behind to seize her ruined Gundam and drag it into the city.

Inside the DOM Trooper, Trojan Noiret fixed his sight on the monster before him. That thing's railgun had only clipped the Gaia and look what it had done; no wonder the _Minerva_ had lost its positron cannon.

"Well, asshole," he snarled, "let's see how well you do against a moving target!"

—

A pulsing red beam blasted through the sky and forced Lily Thevalley to send the Vent Savior Gundam whirling off course. Up above, a squad of ZAKU Warriors on Guuls with a Slash ZAKU Phantom at their head bore down on her with a storm of firepower.

"Jeez, you guys are relentless!" she groaned—and then sent the Vent Savior ducking below a wave of fire again, just as the Guuls unleashed a hurricane of missiles. Lily's silver mobile suit plunged down towards the ground, then pulled up at the last second and cut down the missiles with a CIWS burst—only to have to throw the Vent Savior to the side again as the ZAKUs focused their fire.

Up above, a Gunner ZAKU Warrior leveled off its heavy cannon and fired; Lily rocketed back into the sky to dodge the blast. Then the ZAKU Phantom came down with a hard swing of its beam axe, sending the Vent Savior staggering back—straight into the sights of the Slash ZAKU Warrior and Blaze ZAKU Warrior, which drove her back with even more beam fire against her shield.

"Now you're just pissing me off!" she snapped; the Vent Savior burst up over the blasts, then rocketed forward to break apart the ZAFT mobile suits' formation. The Gunner ZAKU slid up behind her for a shot at her back; instead, the Vent Savior flipped around and answered with a withering barrage from the silver Gundam's plasma cannons that sent the ZAKUs scrambling for distance. And as the Slash ZAKU Warrior dropped in from behind, beam axe raised high, she whipped around with her rifle at the ready and drilled a blast straight through the ZAKU's cockpit.

The Vent Savior roared up over the flames, eyes fixed on the remaining four ZAKUs. Lily spared a glance down below towards the city and hoped Emily would be okay. After all, no one could beat the Blood Knight, and she'd hate to miss a chance to prove it.

—

The CGUE Assault lurched to the right and darted down the street with a roar of its thrusters, diving between the narrow and short buildings for cover. Inside, Rau Le Creuset idly cursed the local architecture and made another sharp turn. The two BABIs behind him were still on his tail, but if this worked—

The CGUE made another right and charged towards one particular building. The BABIs followed, spitting beam fire. Rau clenched his teeth as the CGUE somersaulted over the building—which then exploded upwards, and a Buster Dagger rose from the dust and fired its hyper impulse cannon straight through the two oncoming ZAFT machines, blowing them to pieces.

Laser sword in its right hand and beam rifle in its left, the CGUE turned back towards the city's edge and the ZAFT troops still approaching as the Desert Dawn's mobile suits moved in. If nothing else, at least they were persistent—

He stopped and blinked in disbelief as a different feeling shot up his spine. He flung the CGUE behind the cover of a building as the ZAFT troops opened fire again and put a hand to the side of his head. That building pressure, still faint, still in the background, but there nonetheless...and getting closer...

He looked towards the sky, where the Eclipse was still in battle with that sword-wielding ZAFT mobile suit. Did she feel this too? It was so powerful—if she didn't, she would soon. And it felt like...

Rau broke into a grin before he threw the CGUE back into battle.

_Fortune favors those who wait!_

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Banadiya, Libya**

"What do you mean another ship?" Meyrin groaned as the _Minerva_ shook. There was already that _Eternal_-class on the edge of the battlefield, hurling firepower into Banadiya from the two Tristan cannons mounted on the sides of its prow.

"_Lesseps_-class moving in from the southeast," Burt elaborated, "and it looks like it's launched the rest of its mobile suit complement."

Meyrin seized the intercom and switched the frequency. "Captain Hatias," she said, "this would be a good time to deploy your mobile suits and reinforce us."

"I know," Hatias answered, "landship from the southeast. Things are still a mess here. We won't be able to launch our full company, since," he shifted awkwardly, "not all of the ship's crew agreed with the decision my officers and I made."

That was not what Meyrin wanted to hear, but she forced down the frustration. "Just help us with whatever you can," she said, and put the intercom back down. _Don't tell me you're having second thoughts..._

—

Sparks flew and the Gundam Eclipse rattled as its beam sword met the CaZEL's blade in the sweltering air over Banadiya. Emily flung the Eclipse back, just in time to avoid a beam cannon barrage from the CaVAL down below; Coniel's Murasame immediately transformed and showered the CaVAL with beam rifle fire, driving it back, but not before the CaZEL could charge in for another sword blow.

"How do you like our new hardware?" cackled Varder Ehrmacht. The CaZEL flung the Eclipse away with its sword; Emily whipped up the beam rifle in her left hand, only for the CaZEL's heat rod to snake around it and yank it from her grasp. "Ah-ah-ah, we're fighting the old fashioned way!" The CaZEL charged, ducked the Eclipse's slash at its head, then rammed the black Gundam with its shoulder. Emily swung the sword around again to barely block the CaZEL's downward slice. "But I—"

"_God_ you're so annoying!" another voice cut in, and Coniel's Murasame slammed its foot down onto the CaZEL's head. The sleek mobile suit went reeling as Emily backed away to catch her breath, and the CaVAL down below let loose a punishing beam cannon barrage to force the mobile suits back on the defensive. "New models or not, these idiots aren't going to get the best of me."

The CaZEL dropped into a combat stance while on the ground, Lilith chuckled. "I wasn't expecting Murasame girl, but we can handle her pretty well."

Varder grinned over at his two opponents. "Indeed. But for you, angel face, we've got another surprise. Just something to let you know that we," his grin got a little wider, "were thinking of you!"

Emily blinked in confusion at the two ZAFT machines—and then the feeling was there.

Her entire body went cold. That feeling—the pressure of a Newtype, somewhere in the sky, getting closer, and stronger. There was something distorted about it, like looking at something through a glass of water. But she could tell what that thing was supposed to be, what it was originally, underneath the distortion. That feeling—she had only felt that once before. From one other person.

She turned towards the source and her blood froze in her veins.

"M-Mother...?"

Off in the distance, the Providence ZAKU's monoeye blazed to life, and in the cockpit, Unit Zero-Two lifted her eyes towards the target and charged.

—

To be continued...


	30. Phase 30: Unit Zero Two

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 30 - Unit Zero-Two

—

**May 22nd, CE 77 - Banadiya, Libya**

It was upon her before she knew it.

The Gundam Eclipse let out a bone-jarring screech as a wave of beam fire slammed against its beam shield. Up above, the Providence ZAKU spiraled gracefully out of the clear blue sky and pummeled the Eclipse with another volley of beam fire. Emily shook her head, but the image would not go away—the picture of her mother, her pale, thin face smiling at her from the bed where she spent her days. The mother who loved her. The mother who she knew, churning in the deepest pit of her heart, was sitting inside that gray mobile suit.

The same mother that had died almost ten years ago.

Emily fought back tears as the Providence ZAKU attacked again. "It can't be," she whispered, and the ZAKU sent her reeling with yet another beam barrage. "It can't be you!"

Up above, the Murasame slithered its way out of the net of beam fire cast by the CaZEL's shoulder-mounted beam guns. "What the hell are you doing?" Coniel snapped. "This is a battlefield! Pay attention!"

Emily flung the Eclipse down below the ZAKU's beam fire, but the gray mobile suit followed her flight path with expert precision.

"This pressure," she groaned, "it's like her...!" She backed away as the ZAKU hurled another storm of beams at her. "It can't be!"

_My little angel,_ her mother's quiet, warm voice murmured from the darkness of her memory. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head—but the ZAKU stormed forward to ram the Eclipse, send it reeling back again, and shower it with beam fire.

"Emily!" Coniel shouted. "Wake up, you idiot!"

The Murasame abruptly rattled and went staggering back under a heavy blow to its shield from the CaZEL's beam sword, and the white and black mobile suit went back on the defensive under beam fire from the CaVAL down below.

"If I'd known you were going to react like this, I'd have let her off the leash sooner!" Varder cackled, and the CaZEL turned towards the reeling Eclipse. "Now, this is the end for you, Angel of Death!"

Emily ground her teeth and struggled to regain control—but the ZAKU's fire and the horrible pressure rippling out from the cockpit kept her willpower at bay. That was her mother in that mobile suit—but her mother was dead. But that feeling, the feeling of peace and safety, the feeling of having a parent who actually loved her—

The CaZEL slammed its blade down onto the Eclipse's beam sword and sent the black Gundam reeling, just in time for the ZAKU to whip in from behind and level off its DRAGOONs. Emily darted aside and left a trail of afterimages, leaving the CaZEL to slash through them uselessly—but the ZAKU would not be tricked and rocketed after her.

"You...you can't be her!" Emily cried, and brought the Eclipse around again with trembling hands. "You _can't!_"

—

Now that he had a chance to look at it up close, Trojan Noiret had to admit that the towering ZAKU Ranger could certainly intimidate. A gigantic rail cannon hanging over its right shoulder, a ZAKU Phantom torso on its forward hull clutching a beam rifle, two larger hands with three claws, a massive hovercraft assembly on its back...

And it had friends. Four ZAKUs all on Guuls, hovering around the Ranger in a defensive pattern. And then they all opened fire, and Trojan slammed back the DOM's controls and sent his mobile suit backpedaling behind its beam shield.

Trojan gritted his teeth as a storm of missiles slammed down around his humming mobile suit. "Well," he snarled, "you might have a bunch of guns, but _I've_ got _speed!_" The DOM darted to the right as the ZAKU Ranger's beam cannons opened fire, and an instant later he flung the mobile suit aside again to dodge a blast from a Gunner ZAKU Warrior hovering overhead. And then the Blaze ZAKU Warrior lunged in from behind, beam rifle blazing; Trojan whirled around and sliced at it with the beam sabers on his custom rifle, only to see the enemy back away and let the blades sear by harmlessly. And then the Slash ZAKU Warrior showered him with beam bolts and drove him back further.

Trojan jammed back the controls, then reared back and fired a bazooka shell straight into the sand in front of him. A column of dust burst up from the ground—and the DOM Trooper burst through, vaulted over the Gunner ZAKU's furious blast, leveled off its weapons at the ZAKU Ranger, and opened fire—

...and Trojan felt his jaw drop as the blasts smashed harmlessly against a translucent, shimmering barrier around the monstrous machine. Up above, a Blaze ZAKU Phantom on a Guul opened fire and forced the DOM back onto the ground, and the Ranger whipped around to face its diminutive foe.

"Beam shields don't work that way," he grunted, and then the Ranger's beam cannons let fly with another burst that drove the DOM back further. "Oh, wonderful, does this mean I have to get _close?_"

The ZAKUs above him backed away and opened fire, while the Ranger leveled off its beam cannons again.

"Fine," Trojan growled, "close combat it is!"

—

The CGUE shuddered to a halt in the dust on the city edges, and Rau Le Creuset cast a wary glance skyward. Two more BABIs circling like hawks, waiting for their opportunity—but the Desert Dawn's ground-based mobile suits, even with their obsolescence, were putting up a decent enough screen of firepower. Nearby, the guns of a transformed ZuOOT boomed and forced the two BABIs to veer off course.

Rau stretched his senses towards the sky, towards that spot where ZAFT's new arrival was fighting. So powerful and a little similar to Emily, but she was her own person—and she had to be a clone as well. Definitely, if Emily's real mother had already died.

The BABIs swept down towards the city, spitting machinegun rounds; Rau lunged into the air, beam sword blazing to life, and slashed one of them in two before it could react. The other swerved away and banked back up into the air, traced by fire from the Desert Dawn, and Rau sailed back down to the ground with a satisfied smirk.

And the other presence, that churning vortex of suffering...well, Emily would have to learn one way or the other that this world was well and truly beyond salvation. And nothing could convince her more than this.

—

With a resounding crash, the Gunner ZAKU Warrior fired off a pulsing blast from its beam cannon—only for the Vent Savior Gundam to effortlessly somersault over the shot and drill a blast of its own through the ZAKU's Guul unit. The ZAKU staggered from the sky—and then the Vent Savior was there to blow it away with a plasma cannon volley.

In the cockpit, Lily Thevalley blew out a breath and waited for the next move from the remaining three ZAKUs. A Slash ZAKU Phantom and two Blaze ZAKU Warriors split their formation up and showered the Vent Savior with beam fire.

"Three more," she grumbled, "and then I can go help Emily!" The ZAKUs came screaming in; Lily darted to the left and whipped out a beam saber, and with an ear-splitting shriek, she whirled around and slashed one of the Blaze ZAKUs in two at the waist. The two survivors split up and the remaining Blaze ZAKU let loose a cloud of missiles that sent the Vent Savior spiraling towards the ground for distance, before pulling up and tearing the missiles apart with a CIWS burst.

The Slash ZAKU Phantom dropped in from above with its beam axe blazing and slammed the blade down onto the Vent Savior's shield. Lily grunted in pain as the blow threw her back in her seat, and the ZAKU pressed harder against her.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"The Desert Dawn units aren't enough to fight off this attack," said Meyrin Hawke on the _Minerva_'s darkened bridge. "We need reinforcements if we're going to drive those ZAFT forces off."

On the auxiliary screen, Nathaniel Hatias frowned thoughtfully. "It looks like I'll have about two thirds of my normal complement. About twenty-five mobile suits. We're prepping them as fast as we can."

Meyrin glanced nervously at the tactical map. The real worry wasn't the ZAFT forces; they needed to be pushed back but they weren't making headway anymore.

No, the real worry was that Providence ZAKU that fought like a lion and was thrashing Emily around in front of those two cobbled-together new ZAFT models. That thing had come from the _Lesseps_-class and Rau had reported in that there was "pressure" coming from it—and _that_ was never a good sign.

—

Sahib Ashman bit back a curse as he ducked into the waterfront warehouse and activated a clanking cargo lift. The whole point of a secret weapon was to keep it secret, and this was not the way he wanted it to be revealed. The Desert Dawn, after all, survived by trickery and cunning and keeping a whole deck of aces up its sleeves. And this little surprise was supposed to be reserved for the Alliance—the same Alliance that was surely watching this battle and eagerly counting just how many mobile suits Sahib Ashman had collected over the years.

On the other hand...there was ZAFT.

The cargo lift rattled as it reached the bottom of the shaft, and Sahib stepped into the harsh artificial light with his retinue of bodyguards. A gift from Andrew Bartfeldt, so to speak, completed at great cost to the Desert Dawn, it had started its life as a ZAFT project during the Valentine War. Abandoned in a secret underground hangar and never uncovered by disinterested Alliance occupiers and Junk Guild technicians not clever enough to find their way inside, Andrew Bartfeldt's embryonic trump card had become that of the Desert Dawn. And Sahib Ashman hated it.

After all, the massive _Compton_-class land battleship once called _Dyson_ and now named _Omar Mukhtar_ was the very antithesis of guerrilla armament. What kind of self-respecting desert warrior tooled around the Sahara in a two hundred and thirty-meter-long tank?

"Zahid," he called out as he ascended the walkway to the boarding catwalk, "you've followed the situation outside, right?"

The lanky young captain of the _Mukhtar_ smirked back. "Shitty as can be, as I saw it."

Sahib ground his teeth and pushed past the younger man. "Activate the elevator and get the ship topside. This day came sooner than I expected."

"Ooh, you mean _Omar_ finally gets to see some action?" Zahid shot back with a grin entirely too excited for Sahib's tastes. "Give me fifteen minutes and everything will be on the move."

Sahib seethed to himself as he marched down the boarding catwalk. _If ever the situation for Banadiya became truly dire, we would deploy Bartfeldt's last surprise—and bring upon ourselves the full wrath of the Earth Alliance._

He shook his head. Those were not the thoughts of a successful man. Those were the thoughts of a man who was already dead.

—

The ZAKU Ranger fired its enormous rail cannon and Trojan Noiret thanked his lucky stars he had already gotten out of the line of fire—but the shell plowed straight through Banadiya and tore a massive smoking gash in the city, before detonating somewhere in the water. Trojan cringed; he had forgotten that railguns could do that.

Undeterred, the ZAKU Ranger pushed forward and its four Guul-mounted escorts focused their fire on the twisting DOM. The Ranger sent a burst of steam billowing out of the cooling systems on its back and chest, and angled its cannon for another shot.

"Oh no you don't!" Trojan shouted, and the DOM lurched forward, ducking beneath fire from the determined ZAKUs. The Ranger turned enough to fire back at him with its left-hand beam cannon and Trojan sent the DOM into a furious drive to the right—but the Gunner ZAKU to cut him off with a pulsing red beam blast. He darted backwards again, then moved away as the ZAKUs honed in their fire—and the Ranger edged closer to Banadiya, warming up its rail cannon for another shot. The ZAKU Phantom up ahead leveled off its beam rifle—

...and then went reeling as something slammed into its shield and exploded. The ZAKUs backed away and Trojan blinked in surprise as a flurry of rocket-propelled grenades came roaring out of the city. He slammed down the magnification dial and gasped at the sight of bearded, dusky men, weapons in hand, firing up at the Guul-mounted mobile suits.

"What the—they're gonna get killed!" Trojan hissed. The ZAKUs turned their fire towards the city; Trojan flung himself into their line of fire to deflect their blasts with his beam shield. The ZAKUs split their formation and showered the DOM with rifle fire. "And I thought I was stupid for taking this thing on," he grumbled.

Up ahead, the ZAKU Ranger's three monoeyes lit up with a flash. Trojan ground his teeth as he activated the beam sabers on his custom rifle. There was more than one way through a beam shield.

—

Flames scattered around the roaring Vent Savior Gundam as it finished off the crippled body of the last Blaze ZAKU Warrior and rocketed up towards the Slash ZAKU Phantom floating overhead. Lily threw the silver Gundam to the left as the ZAKU let loose its beam Gatlings; it whirled around with its beam axe in hand and the blade crashed against the Vent Savior's shield. Lily flung the blade skyward and swung up her beam rifle, but the ZAKU jetted backwards with a burst from its Guul's forward thrusters and slammed it head-on with a missile salvo.

Lily shook her head angrily as she stashed the Vent Savior's beam rifle and drew a beam saber instead. "Oh, you wanna do this the hard way? We'll do this the hard way!"

The ZAKU charged and brought down its axe; Lily swung up the saber to deflect the blow, then stormed forward and rammed the ZAKU as hard as she could with the Vent Savior's shoulder. The green mobile suit staggered back but managed to remain attached to its Guul; Lily drove the saber down towards the green subflight system, but the ZAKU wedged its axe blade into the way and parried the blow safely aside from its target. The ZAKU surged forward; Lily slammed her shield forward to deflect its blow and left the two mobile suits struggling against each other.

"And now," Lily grumbled, "you're just being _annoying!_"

—

"Quite a bit of pressure your mother's giving off, little Emily," chuckled Rau Le Creuset as the CGUE Assault twisted its way through the low buildings of Banadiya. "And I see the skill runs in the family!"

Up above, a BABI spiraled down with a spray of machinegun bullets. The CGUE darted to the left as the bullets tore up the dusty road—just in time for two men down below to spring out of hiding and fire RPGs up towards the charging mobile suit. It jerked to the right but the second grenade struck home and blew off the BABI's left arm at the shoulder—and with a crash, Rau stormed forward and sliced the rest in half with his sword, and landed with a satisfying thud as his defeated foe exploded in midair.

Rau turned the CGUE's monoeye towards the sky. The Providence ZAKU was charging towards the city and the Desert Dawn's meager handful of remaining aerial combat mobile suits was rising to meet it. This would get gory.

And he could hardly wait.

—

The Gundam Eclipse shook from a furious overhead sword blow from the charging CaZEL. The black Gundam reeled back and drew back its beam sword; the CaZEL ducked beneath its horizontal swipe and slammed its knee into the Eclipse's torso, sending it staggering and making Emily's ears ring.

"Not so tough now that _we've_ got an angel of death, are ya?" Varder cackled. Up above, the Providence ZAKU lunged up, the CaZEL darted aside, and the gray mobile suit pounded the Eclipse with a wall of beam fire.

"Emily!" a voice rang out—and the CaZEL ducked away as the silver and gray CGUE Assault dropped into the battle with a sword slash. Emily snapped her eyes up ahead and found the Desert Dawn's remaining aerial mobile suits charging into the fight, guns blazing. The Providence ZAKU whirled around and its monoeye flashed threateningly at the newcomers. "Emily, you deal with that Providence ZAKU!" Rau barked.

"But that—"

"It doesn't matter! _Go!_"

Emily swallowed the fear and slammed on the booster, darting away just as the CaVAL down below opened fire with its beam cannons. The Providence ZAKU somersaulted up above the Desert Dawn mobile suits, angled its DRAGOONs, and slammed their ranks with a barrage of beam fire. At the center of the storm, a stricken DINN belched fire and spiraled out of the sky with a trail of smoke. The Desert Dawn mobile suits split up—but the Providence ZAKU dropped into their formation with another burst of fire, and two more mobile suits vanished in fiery explosions.

Coniel's Murasame burst out of the heavens with a volley of beam fire. "That thing is massacring us!" she screamed. "Emily, move your ass!"

Emily squeezed her fists around the Eclipse's controls and moved the Gundam in. "Stop this," she murmured, "my mother...she would never do this..."

The Providence ZAKU whipped around and pummeled the Eclipse and the Murasame with beam fire. Coniel banked away with a curse while Emily kept going behind her beam shield and pulled back its beam sword.

"You're not her," Emily moaned, and the images of her mother danced before her eyes. She charged down with a scream—but the Providence ZAKU, faster than she could see, tossed its beam rifle over to its left hand, drew a beam saber from its shoulder with its right, and swung the blade up to parry her own. The two mobile suits crashed together and stared into each other's eyes.

All at once, the world around Emily came to a stop and the feelings flooded back. Her mother, letting her shed her tears after another upbraiding by her father; her mother, comforting her after the teasing at school; her mother, soothing the pain from one of the scrapes and bruises Viveka had haphazardly supplied; her mother, the parent who loved her...

Her mother, the person sitting in the cockpit of this mobile suit with its monoeye blazing furiously at her.

The Providence ZAKU flung its quarry back, then jetted upward, backflipped over the heads of a charging pair of Desert Dawn mobile suits, and effortlessly shot them out of the sky. Emily blinked away the tears as she felt them die—as she felt her mother, inside that thing that was killing them.

The Murasame came barreling out of nowhere and rammed the Eclipse aside just as the ZAKU opened fire. "Emily, what in God's name do you think you're doing!" Coniel snapped. "If you're not going to fight, then get the hell out of here!"

She shook her head and struggled to clear the image. "But that thing's pilot—"

"I don't care if it's Lacus fucking Clyne, do something before it kills us all!"

Emily guided the Eclipse back into the air and cringed as another of Coniel's comrades went down in flames—and the old memories of peace washed over her.

—

**ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Arrhenius**_

"Zero-Two's reaction speed and precision are exceeding expectations," Eli Esram noted with a satisfied grin. He glanced over at the _Arrhenius_'s nondescript captain. "I'd say she's doing well."

Captain Haverson scowled at the thought. "For a kid."

"Oh, but she's not just any kid, Haverson," Eli corrected with a wagging finger. "She's _special_. Our very own Angel of Death, even. You know that."

"That doesn't mean I'm not going to find it weird that our little superweapon is a teenage girl."

Eli chuckled and turned back towards the bridge windows. "Well, _that_ might be weird," he admitted, "but the results speak quite eloquently for themselves. Look at her. She's torn those guerrillas apart. Give her enough time and she'll raze the whole city—and the _Minerva_ with it."

Haverson cleared his throat. "Speaking thus," he said, "scouts reported strange seismic activity around the city."

"Seismic activity? Here?"

"Some kind of vibration from underground. They have no idea what it is—but Banadiya was Andrew Bartfeldt's old headquarters, and Bartfeldt was known to hide things up his sleeve to surprise his enemies. If those guerrillas got into his HQ, they might have a bomb or something. And they did say the _Aristotle_ is somewhere around here..."

Eli paused and considered that. "Pull the _Arrhenius_ back and ask the _Seraphim_ to do the same," he said, "and order our mobile suits to be ready to make a quick escape if need be. I'll not waste the Ranger and Zero-Two on whatever tricks these Resistance rats have, and we'd best draw them onto more favorable terrain before we finish them off anyways." He grinned over at Haverson. "Don't you agree?"

"Something like that, sir."

—

**Banadiya, Libya**

Lily Thevalley groaned in pain as the Slash ZAKU Phantom above hammered her poor Vent Savior again and again with furious beam axe blows. It stormed forward and flung her back with a bone-jarring downward swing; the Vent Savior floundered in midair.

Shaking her head, Lily snapped her eyes back up towards the charging mobile suit and saw her chance as it lined up for another overhead swing. It brought the axe down again—but this time, the Vent Savior ducked to the left, then whirled around and swept its saber through the ZAKU's waist, and with a thundering explosion, the deed was done.

Lily let out her breath and scanned the skies for her next opponent. Emily was somewhere over the city, but closer to her was a hulking gigantic hovering thing with a huge cannon, and four ZAKUs mounted on Guuls. And standing against them with only a few far-off Desert Dawn mobile suits for support was—

"Trojan?"

The Vent Savior immediately transformed and charged down below, spewing plasma cannon volleys. The ZAKU Ranger turned in surprise and hurled a wall of beam fire up at the incoming mobile suit, forcing it off course.

"Lily!" Trojan exclaimed, and the DOM Trooper paused its fire long enough to dodge a return volley from the flying ZAKUs. "This thing is beam-shielded, help me kill it!"

Lily managed to smirk back even as the ZAKUs spiraled out around her. "Getting yourself in trouble again, huh? Where would you be without me?"

—

With a resounding crash, the Providence ZAKU slammed its foot up into the Gundam Eclipse's chest. Emily cringed as the blow slammed her back into her cockpit seat; and then the ZAKU charged forward with its saber held back for a final stab at the Eclipse's chest. She yanked the controls to the side and ducked away as the ZAKU shot past—but it fired back with a storm of beam fire from its DRAGOONs.

"Emily, stay close to it!" Rau's voice ordered; up above, his flailing CGUE Assault parried a pair of sword blows from the two beam swords in the charging CaZEL's hands and went staggering back. "It can't use the DRAGOONs that way!"

Emily snapped her gaze back towards the ZAKU, back on the attack. Close to this thing meant more of that pressure—and those memories—

The ZAKU gave her no choice as it roared forward with a bone-jarring downward hack. Up above, the CGUE ducked beneath a horizontal slash from the CaZEL, then dropped down towards the ZAKU with its sword upraised.

Emily's eyes went wide as the ZAKU whirled around, jetting backwards at the same time, then whipped up its saber and slashed off the CGUE's right arm as it passed. And then it swung around again and sent a blazing volley of beam fire down into the falling mobile suit. Rau slammed the controls to the side, but the blasts still ripped through the mobile suit's left side and robbed it of its remaining arm, its backpack, and its left leg. Rau grunted in pain as shrapnel filled the cockpit and the CGUE fell with a billowing trail of smoke.

"Rau!" Emily cried—but the CaZEL was there to slam her back with a sword blow.

"Going somewhere?" Varder cried. Emily steeled herself for the next attack, only to find the Murasame barreling out of nowhere, and with a crash, it shouldered the CaZEL aside, then darted upward and showered the green mobile suit with beam rifle fire.

"Emily, you deal with the gray one!" Coniel shouted.

Emily turned her eyes towards the Providence ZAKU, just in time to watch it shoot down a Jet Dagger L. It turned slowly towards her, monoeye flashing to life, daring her to come closer. It snapped up its beam rifle—

...and an instant later, the ZAKU went surging skyward as the air filled up with beams, missiles, and machinegun rounds. Emily looked around frantically and found a new force of mobile suits sailing in over the city—ZAFT mobile suits, their fire aimed at...the other ZAFT mobile suits...

With an abrupt crash, the green and white body of the Proto Abyss dropped into the fight and slammed its lance down against the Providence ZAKU's shields, driving it back.

Inside the CaZEL, Varder broke into a wild grin. "So the _Aristotle_'s really betrayed us, huh?" he cackled. "A whole nest of traitors waiting to die! Zero-Two, engage!"

The Providence ZAKU surged forward; the Proto Abyss stabbed forward with its lance, but the ZAKU deflected the blow skywards with its saber, then lopped off the lance's blade and left the Proto Abyss with a useless red staff. The green mobile suit backed away with a volley of beam fire and hurled the lance's remains away. Up above, the Murasame soared down into the battle with a beam volley that drove the Providence ZAKU back.

Emily flung herself back into the way as the CaZEL gave chase and smacked it aside with her beam sword. She whipped around to face the Providence ZAKU again—only to find it once more on the attack.

The pressure intensified. The memories became vivid and the world around her began to fade. Her mother's voice echoed in her head, drowning out the lingering presence of her father.

_Keep being my little angel..._

"_Move!_"

All at once, Coniel's Murasame slammed into the Eclipse from the side—and a moment later, the Providence ZAKU's beam saber plunged into the Murasame's cockpit. The world returned in a rush as Emily felt a familiar presence disappear on the edges of that enormous pressure in front of her—and the Eclipse reeled as the dying Murasame exploded.

"C-Coniel," she whispered. Up above, the ZAKU turned its monoeye towards her. "My...my mother...you just...you killed her..."

The ZAKU snapped up its beam saber and charged.

Emily's eyes lit up in rage. "_You killed her!_"

The ZAKU charged, but the Eclipse was ready, and the two mobile suits' blades slammed together in a shower of sparks.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

Captain Evers frowned thoughtfully as he watched the battle proceed on the _Seraphim_'s bridge. The _Aristotle_ had not sent its entire mobile suit complement. Perhaps not every pilot on the ship had decided to defect with Captain Hatias—or perhaps they were keeping units in reserve for another wave.

The latter was the wiser assumption, and Evers sat back stiffly in the captain's chair. Plus there was that "seismic activity" the _Arrhenius_ had warned about, in a region not known for any seismic activity.

The ground shook again—this time from the ZAKU Ranger slicing another shell through Banadiya. At least it was performing well, and Zero-Two was exceeding expectations...but that still left the other conventional mobile suits, which were being steadily chipped away. At this rate, to keep up the attack, they would need to send the _Seraphim_'s full complement, and Evers was trying to avoid that.

"It looks like we have them trapped," chuckled Eli Esram on the auxiliary screen. Evers glanced up in annoyance.

"Perhaps."

"I suggest we move our ships in closer and commence bombardment of the town. The Ranger is doing perfectly fine, but it still needs to fight past those last few little gnats buzzing around its heels."

Evers arched an eyebrow. "The _Aristotle_ just launched reinforcements, commander. The prudent thing to do would be to pull back and scrounge up some reinforcements of our own."

Eli waved a hand dismissively. "Between the Ranger and Zero-Two, they won't be able to stop us. All we need to do is move in and provide the heavy firepower they need to finish this city off for good." He grinned. "The _Minerva_ _and_ the _Aristotle_, captain. Opportunities like this don't come along every—"

"Commander," a voice on the _Arrhenius_ spoke up, and Evers blinked as another faint rumble picked up—a rumble that was getting louder. "New seismic activity detected. It's getting stronger, and it's focused on the ridge to our east."

Eli frowned. "An earthquake, here—?"

He was cut off as the ridge exploded upward. Evers clenched his fists around the captain's chair's armrests and turned his eyes towards the pillar of dust rising into the air—and then a wave of beams and shells lanced out of it and slammed into the _Seraphim_'s laminated armor.

"What the hell is that?" Evers barked. "Sensor, identify!"

"Heat signature matches a _Compton_-class landship, sir!" the sensor officer answered. "Mobile suit reactor heat blooms detected!"

"They had a _landship_ in there?" Eli exclaimed. "How? I thought they were just guerrillas!"

Evers snapped his eyes back towards Banadiya—and fixed them on the crumbling gray structure of Andrew Bartfeldt's old headquarters. "The Desert Tiger," he murmured. "He always had a trick up his sleeve. And popping up a land battleship out of the terrain in the middle of the desert..."

"_Compton_-class is launching mobile suits, sir!" the sensor officer added. "Orders?"

Evers straightened up. "Deploy the _Seraphim_'s remaining mobile suits to defend the ship. Send word to Commander Ehrmacht to get back here at once. We have no choice but to retreat." He glared up at the auxiliary screen and Eli's disbelieving face. "Commander Esram, we're going to have to try a new strategy."

Eli shook his head in shock. "They were hiding under us the whole time..."

—

Varder slammed a furious fist down onto the CaZEL's console as the report came through. "I _almost had you!_" he snapped, and fixed his glowering eyes on the Eclipse as it traded blows with the Providence ZAKU. "Damn it, hold still!" He leveled off the beam cannons and opened fire—but the Eclipse danced around his shots and kept its focus on the ZAKU.

"Varder! What the hell are you doing up there?" Lilith snapped. The CaZEL landed hard next to the dusty CaVAL, both mobile suits' monoeyes looking towards the swordfight up above. "You got the report! We have to get back to the ship!"

"And leave an opportunity like this?" Varder growled.

"It's not worth it! Let's go, we can get them some other time!"

Varder pounded his fist down on the console again. "It's _always_ 'some other time!' How many more times will we be delayed?"

The CaVAL turned back towards the retreating ZAFT ships. "It doesn't matter. There won't _be_ a next time if we don't protect the ship. Now let's go!"

With a burst from its engines, the CaVAL darted off towards the ships. Varder glowered up at the sky and the Eclipse up above. "I won't be denied again," he growled, and threw a switch. "Zero-Two, return to the _Arrhenius_."

The Providence ZAKU parried a blow from the Eclipse, backed away, fired a combat flare into the black Gundam's face, and then leapt around and rocketed off back for home. Varder spared his reeling opponent one more hateful glare, and then vaulted into the air after his retreating allies.

—

**Athens Naval Installation, Greece, Eurasian Federation**

Mirage Colloid was a wonderful thing.

It, after all, was what had hidden the Aurora spy plane that had circled above the battlefield of Banadiya, high enough overhead to hide the sound of its suppressed engines, and it was the reason why Gerhardt von Oldendorf could eagerly watch video so soon of the battle between Banadiya's grubby little Resistance warriors and the ruthless butchers of ZAFT.

No doubt the Alliance officers would be intrigued by the Desert Dawn's apparent possession of a formidable mobile suit force and a land battleship. Perhaps the Alliance would be sweeping through what was left of Banadiya soon enough. But "soon enough" was not soon enough for Gerhardt von Oldendorf, and instead he fixed his attention on one little skirmish in particular.

The Providence ZAKU, as Intelligence had described it, fought with unnatural speed and precision. It destroyed most of the Desert Dawn's remaining aerial mobile suits; it fought the mighty jet-black Gundam the Alliance had codenamed "Nightfall" to a standstill. At long last, he had answered the riddle. No doubt Lord Djibril would be all over this.

But that wasn't the important part. A clone of his late wife was still only that, and shortened telomeres would ensure that her usefulness would expire sooner than was optimal. But Emily...

_Well,_ he mused delightedly, _if you can pass this test, then you can do anything._

—

**Banadiya, Libya**

Deep, black gashes had been torn into the cityscape of Banadiya. A handful of fires were still raging around the detonation sites. Wreckage littered the streets and ruined mobile suits dotted the city.

From her place one of the jeeps in Sahib's convoy, Meyrin Hawke cringed at the sight—and the acrid smells of smoke and death. Another city laid low by the _Minerva_'s presence.

Sahib seemed to read her thoughts. "It's not as bad as it could've been," he spoke up. "Not like Murmansk or Volgograd."

Meyrin frowned. "That doesn't make me feel any better."

"Feelings aren't what's important here. What's important is figuring out our next move." He sat back with a heavy sigh and crossed arms. "We are going to have to evacuate Banadiya. Now that we've had to reveal the _Mukhtar_ and our mobile suits, the Alliance will be sure to send a force to destroy us. We'll have to be out of their range by the time they do."

The _Omar Mukhtar_. That had been something of a surprise. Meyrin wasn't quite sure how to feel about her allies keeping secrets from her, but it had worked out for the best—this time.

Sahib glanced over at the jeep's third passenger. "And you?"

Nathaniel Hatias shrugged. "We didn't sustain any damage. But if both of you are going into the continent's interior, we cannot follow."

"Go to Gigafloat," Meyrin interrupted. "In the Indian Ocean. It should be off the coast of Kenya by now. Ask for Reverend Malchio and tell him I sent you there."

Sahib frowned. "They'll be a target."

"They're always going to be a target."

"And how do you propose he gets to the Indian Ocean? Suez?"

"Leave that to me," Nathaniel said with a confident smile. "They can't stop what they don't know is there."

"And as for us," Meyrin continued, "we'll head south along the Nile and pass by the Horn of Africa."

That was a stupid plan, she knew. It would take them far too close to the major base in Khartoum for a heavily damaged ship with three mobile suits to its name. But it would have to do.

She glanced back at the city. As long as they didn't run into _that_ thing again...

—

The first thing Stella Loussier sensed as her consciousness clawed its way back to life was the familiar antiseptic smell of the _Minerva_'s infirmary. She cracked open an eye, winced at the light flooding through—and then felt relief wash over her at the sight of Shinn Asuka's smiling face.

"Welcome back," he said.

Stella groaned and closed her eyes again. "What...happened?"

"You got wiped out by that thing with the giant railgun."

"...the Gaia...?"

"Yeah. Totaled." He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Sorry."

Stella fought down the urge to cry. The Gaia was gone? Now how would she fight? How would she protect her home and her friends?

"The good news is you're going to be okay," Shinn continued, "and we're going straight to Gigafloat. Where they're going to build us new Gundams. Okay?"

"O-Okay..."

"Now," he went on, "you just get some rest. We'll be alright."

She looked back up at him again. "Is...Shinn okay?"

"Yeah."

"And...and Emily?"

Shinn's smile faded away. "Just get some rest," he said.

Stella slumped back again and decided to do just that, and as she drifted back to sleep, Shinn straightened up, checked his own bandages, threw on his coat, grabbed his crutch, and made for the door.

—

Athrun Zala hated the way his memories came back in one massive emotional flood. It was hardly fair, after all; didn't give him a sporting chance to avoid brooding and becoming miserable.

And those memories came flooding back indeed at the sight of the muscular Alec Ladd, hesitantly shaking Athrun's hand. A man in that green uniform of ZAFT's ground forces, but a man of the old ZAFT—the ZAFT that Athrun Zala had willingly served. The ZAFT that had standards and morals, the ZAFT that stood on the moral high ground and defended it from the savages of Blue Cosmos.

But that ZAFT was as dead as those whose faces now swept back into the pit of his consciousness.

Alec arched an eyebrow. "I'm surprised I didn't see you out there, Zala."

"No mobile suit," Athrun answered with a shrug. Alec cracked a smirk.

"Really now. Big bad Gundam finally got totaled?"

"That was a while ago."

The brawny ZAFT pilot crossed his arms. "You know," he said, "I think I'm starting to understand you bunch of traitors." Athrun frowned, but Alec went on before he could speak. "Ran off from ZAFT because of some moral conflicts with your orders or whatever. I guess I couldn't appreciate that until it happened to me."

Athrun thought back to his old comrades—to Yzak and Dearka, pushed away by his father's racist megalomania; to Andrew Bartfeldt, who joined a singer and a handful of rebels to stop a war gone out of control; to himself, lying on the floor before his father and realizing just how far gone he really was.

He cracked a smile of his own. "Welcome to the right side, Mr. Ladd."

—

All told, it wasn't too bad a set of injuries. Some cuts and bruises from shrapnel hits, but only one had required stitches, and the Coordinator advanced healing would take care of that.

Standing outside the infirmary, Rau Le Creuset flexed his uninjured arm with satisfaction and threw on his long coat. All well and good, because he had more important things to worry about than damage to his treacherous body.

Unit Zero-Two. That was the name he had heard from his contacts about this mysterious little newcomer in ZAFT's forces. Even distracted by Emily and her vastly superior machine, Zero-Two had taken down fifteen mobile suits. Rau could only imagine her in a contemporaneous machine; the destruction she could wreak, the things she could accomplish...

But there was a catch. She was a clone. Still young, perhaps. If she had been cloned as a backup of Lorelei von Oldendorf's genetic material, then she couldn't be any older than Emily. But she was a clone—and in addition to that inconvenient little fact, Rau idly wondered if other changes hadn't been made to her DNA, as long as it was there. As far as he knew, Lorelei had been a Natural—but she was also in no condition to be a mobile suit pilot, so something in the clone of that frail and sickly woman had to have changed.

And there it was. Unit Zero-One had run off and joined the Resistance, so here was Unit Zero-Two. Zero-One had become a perversion of what she had originally been intended to be; Zero-Two would realize what her predecessor had failed to achieve. At least as the smaller minds imagined it.

But a clone could only last so long, as Rau painfully knew. He glanced in the direction where Emily's presence—pulsing, twisting, churning with emotions—was strongest. The world, after all, had room for only one Angel of Death.

—

Shinn came to a stop outside Emily's door to find Viveka leaning against it tiredly. She glanced up at him and shrugged.

"If you're here to talk to her, it's not happening. She's not talking to anyone. Just sitting in there crying."

Shinn blinked. "What happened?"

"All I can get out of her is something about our mother." Viveka shook her head. "Has she snapped or something? She knows our mother's gone."

That pressure—that enormous, blinding pressure that had shot through the battlefield. Shinn suddenly swallowed anxiously.

"That...during the battle," he stammered, "there was this new enemy, with an enormous pressure."

"A Newtype thing?"

"Yeah. And it felt funny, distorted, like it was a clone." The pieces of the puzzle edged closer together. "You...you said your mother had Newtype abilities, right?"

Viveka shrugged. "I guess. I never paid attention to that sort of thing."

Shinn looked past her, towards Emily's agonizing presence, and tried to keep the knot of fear from climbing up his throat.

—

**May 23rd, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Arrhenius**_**, Al Qadarif, Sudan**

"Brainwaves are stable at optimal levels," the technician reported. "Zero-Two is ready for another sortie."

In the cramped and darkened room, Eli Esram stared forward at the examination chair where sat Unit Zero-Two, in her billowy white gown with that preternaturally serene look on her face. Evidently she bore a strong resemblance to that girl the Alliance had taken to calling the "Angel of Death." There were other relations too—a genetic scan had revealed the telltale signs of Coordinator modification—but Vice Marshal Yamato himself had handed him this assignment, and had remained tightlipped about the mysterious girl's details.

Nonetheless, it was quite clear to Eli what was going on here. Zero-Two would be ZAFT's little angel-killer. Even in the inferior Providence ZAKU, she had fought the Nightfall to a standstill and, had it not been for that damned landship's interference, would have destroyed it.

That landship. That was a sour note. All it had done was chase off the _Arrhenius_ and _Seraphim_, but that was vexing enough. The _Aristotle_ and the _Minerva_ gathered in one spot for the taking, but it was not to be. They would have to try something else.

But that was Commander Ehrmacht's job right now. Instead, Eli fixed his attention back on the silent Zero-Two. The things that Chairman Dullindal had called Newtypes were still ill understood, but Eli could certainly say he had never seen brainwave activity like this before. Whatever a Newtype was, Zero-Two was a powerful one.

Eli stepped forward, hands behind his back, and looked over at the technician. "What did you find on the memory scan?"

The technician handed him a printout. "Lots of brainwave activity in the previous sortie. The EEG reader picked up a lot of unexpected surges and dips, like she was mentally interacting with some other Newtype."

Eli blinked. "They can do that?"

"No idea, sir. Research on Newtypes is almost nonexistent. We're messing with something we don't understand."

"Aren't we always," Eli muttered, and looked back at the page. "If we could tell what the enemy pilot's brainwaves were like, we'd have something to work with."

The technician sat back wearily. "Kaplan has a theory on that, sir," he started. "They gave us Zero-Two as a way of countering the Nightfall. Maybe there's some kind of connection between them."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, rumor has it that the kid piloting the Nightfall is some kind of Alliance Extended project gone wrong or something. Maybe Zero-Two is a prototype or something."

Eli pondered that for a moment and studied the girl in the examination chair. "Do we still have our intelligence dossier on her?" The technician handed her a sheaf of papers, Eli flipped through it momentarily, and then he stepped towards the chair.

"Zero-Two? Are you awake?"

Lightless eyes stared back at him. "Yes sir."

"Good." He held out the papers. "I'm assigning you some reading. Before your next sortie, know everything possible about your enemy, pilot of the mobile suit codenamed Nightfall." He smiled. "You're going to kill the Angel of Death."

Zero-Two stared emotionlessly at the papers for an instant.

"Yes sir."

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Al Qadarif, Sudan**

With the map spread out before them, Evers watched with mounting nervousness as Varder Ehrmacht eagerly pointed out the elements of his next attack plan on a wire-grid map of the northern half of Africa on the _Seraphim_'s mapping console.

"If they're going to Gigafloat," he said with an emphatic tap on the icon nestled off the Kenyan coast, "then they'll have to pass down through the Horn of Africa. Only way they can get by Socotra. And we took out two of their mobile suits in this past battle, so with any luck, we'll be up against only three of theirs."

Lilith arched a skeptical eyebrow. "If we incapacitated the pilots, if they don't get more mobile suits somewhere, and if they don't call in reinforcements from some Resistance group we don't know about."

Varder waved it off. "We're in good shape here, since the _Minerva_ has to worry about the Alliance too. Now," he scrolled the map up northeast, "if they head towards Turkey, they'll be going by that gigantic black Alliance ship that kicked their asses last time. If they head east from Banadiya, they run into the Alliance's forces in the Levant. If they head west, they just sit in the desert and wait to be killed by something else. They're heavily damaged and we dealt so much pain to the Banadiya port that they can't possibly hope to get repairs there. So," he tapped a finger on Gigafloat's icon again, "they have to be going here."

Lilith and Evers shared a skeptical look. "We don't know about the Resistance's bases," Evers offered. "There may be somewhere else they're headed."

Both of them almost shivered at the angry look in Varder's eyes, but he composed himself before they could speak. "If you've got any other ideas, then go ahead and share with the class," he said instead, "but I say they're heading southeast. And I say that here," he tapped a finger on the Ogaden Basin, "is where we can set our trap."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Banadiya, Libya**

The _Minerva_ shuddered to life with a rumble that took far longer than Meyrin Hawke would have liked. The wounded warship pushed itself into the air—at least Abes' repairs to the levitator were working—and over the mauled city of Banadiya.

At the city's edges, the _Omar Mukhtar_ turned its hull towards the west, and Sahib Ashman's dusty face appeared on the auxiliary screen.

"This is where we part ways, Captain Hawke," he said with a nod. "Now that we've revealed all our dirty little secrets, we need to get away before the Alliance arrives."

Meyrin frowned. She would have liked an escort down to the Ethiopian highlands... "Where will you go?"

"We have a safe house in the High Atlas mountains."

At her console, Abbey blinked in surprise. "That's all the way in Morocco."

Sahib showed them both a knowing grin. "We are the Desert Dawn, ladies. I'd like to see the Alliance follow us across the desert." He sat back as the _Mukhtar_ began to move. "It's been an honor. _Mukhtar_, out."

The screen went dark, and Meyrin watched the _Mukhtar_ begin to grind its way into the desert. For her, the path ahead was south through Sudan, past Khartoum, into the Ethiopian highlands, out through the Ogaden and Somalia, into the Indian Ocean.

Now they just had to get there.

—

At least she could get by now without bursting into tears. That was an improvement.

Curled up on her bed and her face streaked with tears, Emily stared desolately at the wall in front of her. It was her mother in that mobile suit. She had felt it. Not _really_ her mother...but that girl with the Newtype signature of her mother, the one that gave her those memories and that feeling of peace.

What was she doing there? Had ZAFT done to her mother what the Alliance had intended to do to Emily herself? That was impossible. Nobody could turn Lorelei von Oldendorf into a soldier. That was why she, Emily, had been born.

The memories drifted back. Emily saw herself again, a little girl, sobbing in her mother's arms. She had come home with a less than satisfactory report card and Gerhardt's wrath had avalanched down onto her. It wasn't her fault, she protested; multiplication was hard, history was boring, the other kids talked to her in class and distracted her, the teacher was mean—

Gerhardt had disagreed with a slap, buried her in a furious fusillade of angry words about her irresponsibility and laziness, and then sent her to her room, but Emily had taken a detour and wound up in her mother's room. And Lorelei listened patiently as her daughter cried and buried her stinging face in the sheets and railed against the injustice of the world as only an eight-year-old could.

And then, once the tears had ended, she had said mostly the same things to her that her father had said—but she said them in a way that made Emily know, in the most unshakable depths of her heart, that her mother still loved her no matter what the grade was on her history test.

There was no way that could have been turned into a killing machine.

When the comforted eight-year-old Emily had decided at last to do as her father had said and go to her room, her mother had let her go with the reminder that she would always be there to help her.

Emily blinked away the tears.

—

To be continued...


	31. Phase 31: A Mother's Love

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 31 - A Mother's Love

—

**May 24th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Ash Shamaliyah, Sudan**

The Providence ZAKU twisted through the air, ducked gracefully beneath the furious blasts from the Desert Dawn's mobile suits, and then tore two of them out of the air with a punishing barrage from its DRAGOON beam cannons.

Standing in front of the _Minerva_'s computer room screen, Shinn Asuka cringed at the sight. It was familiar. It was Emily, himself, Athrun, Rau—expertly anticipating the enemy's moves and gracefully combining evasion and attack into a single fluid maneuver. Between that and the pressure, it was clear that the _Minerva_ had a new enemy, not quite like those it had fought before.

Or rather, Emily had a new enemy. Because she was the only one left who could seriously be expected to take that thing on.

"It felt similar to Emily, but it wasn't quite her," Athrun murmured thoughtfully. "But how could ZAFT have gotten a clone of her?"

Shinn shook his head. "It wasn't a clone of Emily. It was a clone of her mother." He looked down at a distinctly unsettled Athrun. "Remember the dossier that Copland gave to Meyrin at Carpentaria?"

Athrun looked back at the screen and the pieces began to come together. "She was born to genetically reproduce her mother's abilities..." He paused. "You don't mean this new enemy is..._her_, do you?"

"In a way."

Athrun cringed. "Well, I guess that explains a lot."

Shinn looked back up at the screen, at the Providence ZAKU effortlessly tearing apart Sahib's men. He and Athrun had Kira Yamato as the enemy destiny had reserved for them, but he had never stopped to wonder if destiny had similar plans for Emily.

Evidently it did—and here he was, powerless to do anything about it.

—

The _Minerva_'s doctor was not the sort of man to lie, but Meyrin Hawke could still scarcely believe the words on the screen. She looked up over Talia's desk and stared incredulously at the middle-aged man—who offered only a shrug.

"The blood work was conclusive," he said. "99.6 percent certainty."

Meyrin stared back at the screen. "Explain this to me again," she said. "I don't understand."

"The short version," the doctor answered, "is that telomeres are essentially buffer zones for chromosomes being replicated. They get steadily lost as chromosomes are replicated, and the length of an organism's telomeres is a very rough way of calculating its age. But clones," he tapped a key on Meyrin's computer and called up a different image, this one a comparison between two chromosomes, "don't necessarily have that luxury. A clone will often have the same telomere length as whatever the original's chromosomes had. That means as the clone's chromosomes replicate, they run out of telomeres faster and the replication process starts damaging the DNA. A clone with shortened telomeres would start to experience bodily deterioration at a much younger age than normal." He looked back towards Meyrin. "And that's exactly what's happening to Commander Le Creuset. I noticed high amounts of anti-degenerative medication in his routine blood work and took a sample, and, well, here we are."

"So Rau is a clone? A defective clone, with short telomeres?"

"It looks that way."

Meyrin sat back and immediately her mind took her back to Shinn's words, from entirely far too long ago. Being a defective clone, cursed with a failing body after so little time in life; the anger he must have felt...

But that went places she simply could not believe.

—

With a wistful sigh, Viveka leaned against the railing of the _Minerva_'s internal observation deck and glanced over at Emily. At least she was out of their bunk now, but brooding in a different place wasn't much of an improvement.

Then again, she had every right to be brooding. Especially if what Athrun and Shinn had told her about that gray mobile suit she had fought in Banadiya was true. Emily had always been closest to their mother, a consequence of her being the usual subject of her father's less than merciful attention. Gerhardt would do something to hurt her, and she would race to her mother's arms for comfort and rejuvenation. And to have that little system thrown in her face in the middle of a battle, at the cost of someone's life...

Viveka thought back to their mother, and decided that she had never really known either of her parents. Her father had essentially ignored her, for reasons she understood all too well now. Her mother had tried to show her the attention she deserved, but Viveka von Oldendorf had not been the kind of child to content herself with sitting by a sickly parent's bedside. Not when there was trouble to get into and adventures to have.

That made her feel ashamed—because she felt now, watching Emily wallow in misery at the sight of this foe with their mother's face, that she should have been just as broken up about this as her sister, and she was not.

"So," Viveka started awkwardly, "what are you going to do if you have to fight her again?"

Emily sniffled back some tears. "I don't know."

"Well, you'll have to do something."

Emily bowed her head. "I-I know."

Viveka was silent for a moment. "Em, you know that thing's not really mom, right?" she asked. Emily blinked, and Viveka put her hands on her sister's shoulders and commanded her attention. "It's a clone. It's not mom. Mom is gone. And even if she wasn't, she would never be sitting in a mobile suit fighting against you. You know that, right?"

"Y-Yeah."

"I just want to make sure. Athrun had to deal with a situation like this; maybe you should talk to him about it."

Emily stared away towards the desert below. "He already hated the person he felt like he was fighting."

—

"So," Auel Neider said with a melodramatic flourish, "what have we learned today, children?"

He put his hands behind his back and stood professorially over Stella's bed, with the grumpy blonde Extended slumped in it and not looking amused. Sting crossed his arms.

"Before you do too much gloating, remember that _you_ did this too," he pointed out. Auel shushed him with a glare.

"The lesson, dear Stella," he said as pompously as he could, "is that when the doctor says you're not fit to be up running around again, he means it."

Stella crossed her arms petulantly. "Stella's bored."

"So are we," Sting said, "but if you push yourself too hard, you'll just hurt yourself and you'll be stuck here even longer."

"Besides," Auel said, giving up the professor cause as a lost one, "it's not like there's anything to do out there anyway." He shrugged. "Unless you wanna watch Yolant dismantle the Gaia."

Stella thought about that for a moment and decided that no, no she did not.

—

Trojan Noiret winced at the sound of an empty ammo bin crashing to the hangar floor—and the angry cursing from the mechanic below, a couple meters from whom it had landed. At the crane controls, Lily Thevalley suddenly tried to appear very small, unnoticeable even.

"And that's why you don't shut off the magnet until the crate is _on_ the ground," he said, and shuffled her to the side to take over the crane himself. Lily crossed her arms and put on a truly formidable pout.

"It didn't _actually_ hit anybody."

"But it almost did."

"Almost doesn't count!"

Trojan rolled his eyes. "Just go bug Emily or something."

Lily's pout faded away. "Emily won't talk to me anymore."

"Wha—you too, huh?" They both thought back to that miserable battle outside Banadiya, where they both had been too occupied by the attacking ZAFT forces to notice Emily's vicious battle with a gray ZAKU with the Legend Gundam's backpack. And ever since then, Emily had been about what Roxy called "insufferably emo."

And Trojan had an idea why. Whoever was piloting that ZAKU had gotten under her skin. But he hadn't been able to wheedle anything more out of anybody about it, and that was even more troubling.

"I hope she's okay," Lily mumbled.

"She will be," Trojan said, and cringed at his own lie.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Somali region, Ethiopia**

"Varder," said Lilith softly on the _Seraphim_'s bridge, towards the white-uniformed shape hunched over one of the bridge terminals, "you've been staring at that combat footage for hours."

Varder glanced up towards her with a bitter look in his eye and then returned his attention to the screen in front of him. Lilith only sighed and turned back towards Evers, standing over the ship's mapping console at the back of the bridge.

"The Ogaden is mostly flat desert," Evers explained, "so we'll have plenty of space for the _Arrhenius_ to maneuver." He pointed to a wire-grid map of Ethiopia and Somalia. "Most of the country is covered by highlands. We'll hide the _Arrhenius_ behind them at their southeastern terminus and keep the _Seraphim_ in position here," he tapped on a point in the southeastern part of Ethiopia, "outside Gode. If they want to reach the Indian Ocean, they'll have to get past us, and their current trajectory has them in South Sudan right now. They're on their way." He pointed at the city again. "And once they run into us, the _Arrhenius_ will swing in from behind and trap them."

Lilith glanced up at Varder, still engrossed in the footage from their previous battle. This thing had been his idea, more or less, and Evers had simply filled in the details. But now it was almost as though he had ceded command. And this plan needed a good commander, with the _Arrhenius_ and _Seraphim_ both having lost half their mobile suits.

All this over that stupid angel kid. Lilith felt her blood boil. She wasn't even worth it.

—

**ZAFT **_**Lesseps**_**-class land battleship **_**Arrhenius**_**, Somali region, Ethiopia**

It was not a very lengthy dossier. ZAFT had little information on this "Angel of Death" that had so terrified the Earth Alliance and was now fast becoming the bane of ZAFT's forces as well. Embarrassing, really; what were they paying those paper-pushers down in Intelligence for anyway?

Unit Zero-Two tossed the dossier aside and stretched out on her bunk. Nothing much was to be gained from Commander Esram's intelligence; the rumors among the crew were much more useful anyway.

The ones that said she was some kind of Alliance military project gone wrong were the most interesting. That was, after all, how Zero-Two herself had been born: awakened in a cold library under the colder gazes of military officers and scientists, trained and honed into a perfect soldier, given power and purpose. They had lamented her deployment being earlier than they had intended, but if there were any adverse effects, she didn't feel them.

And in battle against that black Gundam, against the Nightfall itself, that had been what she had felt. Heartbreak and disbelief and pain, like she had been recognized, like she wasn't supposed to be the Nightfall's enemy. Perhaps they had more in common than she thought.

Zero-Two blew out an annoyed breath. Targets were always easier to destroy when there were no emotions involved, but this one would insist on being different. Naturally.

—

**May 25th, CE 77 - Athens Naval Installation, Greece, Eurasian Federation**

Defection.

That was the only word Intel could think of to describe what had happened with that giant ZAFT submarine. It was the only way it made sense. ZAFT had made no secret of its enmity with the _Minerva_, and if that hadn't settled the issue, the submarine's deployment of its own forces to attack ZAFT units at Banadiya certainly did. Defection.

On the dock in front of the _Charlemagne_ as the vast flagship underwent repairs, Ivan Danilov gazed down at his command and pondered the ramifications of that action. Defection.

ZAFT was up to evil things, no doubt. Their last major operation had been at Copernicus, but between that submarine and the space fleet's relentless attacks on merchant shipping and civilian targets, the war was proceeding as ferociously as ever. And still Lord Djibril waited and marshaled his forces and whittled away at the ZAFT fleet, declaring in press conference after farcical press conference that a frontal attack against Lagrange Point 5 could only succeed once the "Coordinator terrorists of ZAFT" had been stripped of their fleet. In a way, Danilov supposed it made sense—and in the meantime, ZAFT paid for their crimes piece by piece, but always there were enough left to go kill again.

But this submarine and its crew...they had chosen differently. Obviously. Unless there had been some kind of hijacking and some other interest had taken over that submarine—and Intel doubted that. Someone had decided to abandon ZAFT and side with the _Minerva_. Because ZAFT had done evil things and the _Minerva_ had opposed them, and someone had decided to be on the right side of the war.

Danilov's mind took him back to Volgograd. He knew in his soul which side of the war he was on.

But defection was disloyalty, and with all they had endured in this war, Ivan Danilov owed the people of the Earth Alliance his fidelity. If he took his command with him in flight from the Phantom Pain, where would they go? Would they all even agree to go with him? What would he do with his rogue command? The thought of turning his guns against the same Alliance citizens he had sworn to protect made his stomach turn.

Danilov sighed and looked back down towards the _Charlemagne_. He wished he could meet the man who had decided to take that submarine out of ZAFT's hands. Perhaps that might make this easier.

—

"You know, I'm tempted to say he's going crazy," said Shams Coza with a disapproving sigh, "but I'm not sure how we'd be able to tell."

He and Mudie stood in the _Charlemagne_'s crew lounge, watching Sven Cal Bayan extract a drink from a vending machine. What was ordinarily too mundane a task to even notice had turned into an opportunity for Shams to sordidly study his commanding officer.

Everything they needed to know was held in that haunted look in the man's eyes. It was as though something was eating him from the inside. Of course he would never say anything about it; he would never even let on about it if he'd had a choice. But Shams Coza considered it of great importance to know whether or not his squad commander was insane, and right now, Sven Cal Bayan looked like he was getting rather insane.

The silver-haired pilot shuffled out of the crew lounge, and Shams looked over skeptically at Mudie. "So? Think he's lost it?"

"He never had it to begin with."

"Well, okay, gone even farther off the deep end than usual."

Mudie crossed her arms imperiously. "I don't care. As long as he doesn't get me killed."

"But that's the thing," Shams protested, "if he's starting to lose his marbles, he just might get us killed." He shook his head. "It's happened before. Some sergeant down in Ramallah thought he was the messiah or something and led his squad into an ambush, and they didn't realize until it was too late that he was nuts. Got 'em all killed." He pointed angrily at the door through which Sven had disappeared. "If that guy's going crazy on us, I don't want to be around for it, and I _definitely_ don't want to be taking his orders."

Mudie arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Then what are you going to do about it?"

"I..." Shams fell silent as his plan crashed into the jagged shoals of reality. "Well, look, you're with me on this, right? We have to do _something_ about him. Report him to the ship's doctor or something."

"You have fun with that, then," Mudie snapped, and turned to leave.

"You know," Shams spoke up, "I'm sticking my neck out for you here too."

Something in Mudie's eyes seemed to snap—but she turned away again and stormed out of the lounge, leaving Shams behind to merely sigh and try not to bang his head against the wall.

—

ZAFT had left its mark on Banadiya many times over. The city had almost a dozen deep, smoking gashes ripped across its landscape, courtesy of that gigantic hovering thing with a ZAKU torso and an immense rail cannon. The crew lounge had intelligence footage from the battle and whatever that giant ZAKU thing was, it was powerful—and, if that beam shield was any indication, difficult to kill.

Grey Saiba had a sinking feeling that he would have to fight it at some point.

He and Merau watched skeptically as the footage looped and showed the _Minerva_'s green DOM Trooper putting up a valiant but futile fight against the incredible power of ZAFT's latest toy. In a way it was heartening to see that the enemy was at least as bad as his own allies. The giant ZAKU thing wasn't trying to use that rail cannon against the DOM; it was intentionally blowing away the city. He had been there. That was no collateral damage.

Watching ZAFT demolish a city just made him think about the time he had taken part in the demolishing of a city, and that made him feel even worse. But there was something else to this little battle too; that ZAFT submarine had deployed forces against its own allies.

In a way, that was heartening too—to see that not everyone succumbed to evil.

But defection? He could never get away with that. He would be leaving people behind—people like Merau. He couldn't go without her, and when he thought of persuading her differently, her mantra popped back into his mind—that he should just forget, that it was only going to get him killed, that he would regret it for the rest of his life if he dwelled on it.

And she was probably right...but that didn't change a thing. And so he looked back at the screen where someone in ZAFT had decided to stand up to their comrades' evil, and wondered if he could do the same.

—

Travis Alterman took another slow drag from his cigarette, stared contemptuously at the smoldering butt, and tossed it to the ground as he let out his breath. Damn thing wasn't even worth putting out.

He looked back out over the grim tableau of Athens Naval Installation and the _Charlemagne_ in its massive dock. Damage was light so the ship would be setting out again soon, and that managed to completely annoy him. They would probably take some stupid detour somewhere, put together some cautious plan to corner the _Minerva_, let all the action pass them by...Captain Danilov was apparently one of those soldiers who took a great deal of pride in everything a soldier did except fight.

At his side, Kelly looked disapprovingly at him—but knew better than to say anything and simply stamped out the glowing cigarette butt herself.

"You know," she said, "you never told me why you accepted the assignment here in the first place."

Travis snorted. "Not like I had a choice."

"You could have requested reassignment." She shot him a sidelong glance. "There were plenty of openings in places with more..._activity_ than here."

He waved down towards the ship. "It was a condition of getting the Nebula Blitz. Had to use it here." _Besides,_ he added mentally, _I _do_ have a job to do here._

At that thought, he turned his mind towards Captain Danilov. The good captain had met with Admiral MacIntyre not long ago, but a lowly ensign was far too low on the totem pole to know what those two had discussed. No matter; his superiors would tell him if he needed to know—and if he didn't, then what did he care?

—

Why didn't he understand?

Erin Gedelberg truly hated to brood in her bunk like a spurned little schoolgirl, but it was either this or doing something stupid and self-destructive, like trying to make him understand. This, she idly reflected, was probably why the instructors at Volkov had warned the cadets against forming relationships anymore intimate than the strictly professional during their tours of duty.

But she had the benefit of years of training even before ever setting foot on Volkov Crater. The powerful Gedelberg family expected all of its offspring to be more or less capable of taking over the family's businesses and investments; Erin's spell in the Phantom Pain was really only meant, as her father had said, to "stiffen her spine" and "give her discipline." The drill instructors had seen to the latter—"eating danger and crapping victory," they'd called it—but she was not so sure about the former. If they had succeeded, after all, none of this would be a problem.

Grey had said the Alliance had done evil things, which he knew, because he had taken part in them. He said _he_ had done evil things. But how could her side of the war do wrong against enemies so heinous? Wasn't this the same Resistance that routinely slaughtered innocents in their endless guerrilla war? Weren't these the same Coordinators who had dedicated themselves to the destruction of their genetic inferiors? Wasn't this the same ZAFT that had invaded them in the Valentine War, thrown Junius 7 at them and tried to destroy them with some superweapon in the Junius War, and now ran around the Earth Sphere slaughtering at will?

If the Alliance was also evil, then did that make her evil too?

A Gedelberg was not evil. If that were so, then her father would have failed to raise a proper inheritor of his wealth and power. And the disappointed eyes bored into her soul and the tears threatened to flow.

She thought back to Grey, and that stupid flutter of her heart whenever she did flared up again, but she knew he would have to understand. Surely he would.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Somali region, Ethiopia**

"And," Shinn finished with a heavy sigh, "that's the problem, pretty much."

Sitting in the captain's office, Meyrin Hawke sat back and tried to process all that information. The theory made sense, at least. If Emily was bred for her mother's Newtype abilities, then it stood to reason that a clone would be made as well, as a backup of the genetic material. If her mother's Newtype abilities were so important that her frail body needed to endure the rigors of childbirth to create a person more suitable to combat and training, then she must be very powerful indeed.

And then there was what this was surely doing to Emily.

"What should we do?" Meyrin asked hesitantly.

Shinn shrugged. "Ask Athrun. He did this already with the Kira clone."

"But that was a clone of someone he was already willing to kill." Meyrin shook her head. "And Athrun...well, Athrun's more disciplined than that." She looked back at Shinn. "Remember the Extended at Karelia? Emily tried to save _her_, and we only went along with it because it coincided with our other intentions."

"I know," Shinn said, "but this is pretty much our best bet. We don't have—"

An alarm cut him off, and as the sirens rang out Meyrin sprang to her feet.

"Captain," Abbey's voice burst up from the intercom, "sensors picked up the heat signature of an _Eternal_-class cruiser on an attack bearing, headed our way. It's probably them again."

Meyrin pinched the bridge of her nose. Of course they couldn't get to the sea without a fight. And with her ship so badly damaged...

"I'll be on the bridge. Go to Condition Red and prepare for battle."

—

The Gundam Eclipse settled into the air with a hum from its engines, and in the cockpit, Emily steeled herself for battle again. It had only been that _Eternal_-class, with those two loudmouthed ZAFT pilots she always seemed to run into; nobody had said anything about that gray ZAKU. Maybe she wouldn't have to...

Down below, the blue-gray CaVAL darted out from behind a sand dune and fired off a round of artillery shells that slammed into the Eclipse's beam shield. Emily flung the Gundam towards the ground, pulled back up, and charged forward with the left-hand palm cannon ready for a strike. The CaVAL darted aside and fired back with the beam cannons on its left arm; the Eclipse ducked aside, letting the blasts sear by, and then charged forward with its beam sword held high for a killing blow—

...and instead, the CaVAL darted to its right, the sand burst upward, and the CaZEL brought both its swords down to deflect the Eclipse's blow.

"You rats on the _Minerva_ have a gift for longevity!" cackled Varder Ehrmacht. "I must admit, I'm impressed!"

The Eclipse flung the CaZEL away and backed up, brandishing its sword, as the CaZEL and CaVAL came back together. "That's right," Lilith agreed with a smirk, "you're not following the script here. You were supposed to die back there in Banadiya."

Emily scowled back. "I don't play by your rules."

"Oh, you will," Varder chuckled, "whether you want to or not. So tell me!" The CaZEL charged forward, ducked under the Eclipse's horizontal slash, then rammed its shoulder into the black Gundam. Emily staggered back and brought down her sword, just in time to deflect the CaZEL's blow. She flung it back again—only to be bombarded by shells and beam fire from the CaVAL down below, and the CaZEL seized its chance to drop in and drive the Eclipse back with a furious barrage of sword blows. "Tell me, angel girl, how you liked meeting Zero-Two!"

Emily blinked. "Zero-Two...?"

"Oh, did you two not introduce yourselves?" Lilith laughed, and the CaVAL slammed a volley of shells into the Eclipse's face. The CaZEL hacked its way through the smoke and charged; Emily ducked beneath its attack and rocketed skyward, only to be followed by more beam fire from the CaVAL. "That's what we call the little angel-killer you tangoed with in Banadiya!"

Emily ground her teeth and flung her sword up to deflect the CaZEL's swings. "Zero-Two, huh...?"

"Not that you should worry about her too much!" Varder added, and with a crash the CaZEL showered her Gundam with relentless beam fire from its shoulders. "'cuz you won't be leaving _here_ alive!"

—

A pulsing red beam blast tore up the ground in front of the charging DOM Trooper and Vent Savior, forcing them both apart. Up above, eight red ZAKUs descended from the sky on Guul units, and one of the two Gunner ZAKU Warriors amid their ranks leveled off its cannon for another shot.

"You're not pulling _that_ stunt again!" Lily screamed, and with a flash the Vent Savior charged skyward and snapped their formation apart with a volley of plasma cannon fire. The ZAKUs darted aside as the silver Gundam roared past—but then they turned again and dodged the fire from the DOM down below. Four of the ZAKUs split off, only for the Vent Savior to roar by in their path, abruptly transform, and shower them with beam fire.

"Lily, box them in!" shouted Trojan; the DOM Trooper backed away from a barrage of beam bolts and fired back with the beam rifle and Gigalauncher's beam cannon, and the blasts drove the squadron of red mobile suits back further. Out of nowhere, a pair of red beams ripped through two of the mobile suits—and the six survivors backed away from the charging Vent Savior, only for one to be picked off from behind by the DOM below. And as they turned around again, the Vent Savior rushed in and speared one of the ZAKUs through the cockpit with a beam rifle blast.

The silver Gundam backed away as the ZAKUs tightened their dwindled formation.

"That was easy," Lily remarked.

"Well, now we've pissed them off," Trojan added. "And here they come!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

Far ahead, the _Minerva_ cast its pitiable shadow over the rolling dunes of the Ogaden desert, and Captain Evers almost felt a little sorry for the winged warship. Missing their positron cannon, one of their heavy beam cannons, the triple-barreled dorsal cannon, and probably quite a few missile launchers and CIWS emplacements, the _Minerva_ would be hard pressed to deal with not one fully armed warship, but two. It was almost unfair.

Fairness, however, was for fools.

Evers threw the switch on his intercom and the _Arrhenius_'s bridge duly appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Commander Esram," he greeted, "our friends on the _Minerva_ appear to have taken the bait."

"And Zero-Two is all warmed up and ready to go," Esram added with a confident smile.

"Commander," Evers added, "you lost most of your mobile suits at Banadiya. You have four ZAKUs, three BABIs, and two BuCUEs. You need to stay back, on the rear of this assault, and leave the bulk of the fighting to the _Seraphim_."

"Oh, but captain," Esram said with an upturned finger, "you forget: Zero-Two is our angel of death."

—

That bolt of recognition shot up her spine and Emily turned in fear at that same feeling from Banadiya. So she was back. The air lit up with a flurry of beam shots, and with a crash the Providence ZAKU and Unit Zero-Two came crashing down into the battle.

"And so begins round two!" laughed Varder as the CaZEL wheeled around for another attack. The Eclipse ducked away from its double sword blows, then dodged a beam cannon volley from the CaVAL down below—but the black Gundam rattled as a wave of beam fire from the ZAKU slammed into its beam shield.

Emily blinked up through the gathering tears and tried to shake off the feelings of her mother. Viveka was right; that thing wasn't her mother; it was a clone, it was probably like Rau and doomed to die early, she couldn't save it, it had killed Coniel, she had to destroy it—

Lorelei's pale, sad face flashed up before her eyes. She punched the Eclipse's beam sword forward and spoiled the ZAKU's saber blow; the CaZEL dropped down from behind, but she whipped around to smack its blades aside and send it reeling with a hard kick to the chest. The CaVAL fired again; the Eclipse darted back and returned its attention to the waiting Providence ZAKU.

"I can fight you," she murmured, even as the Providence ZAKU closed in with another beam barrage. "I don't have to be afraid of you!"

The Eclipse shook as the ZAKU brought its saber down, the auxiliary screen flickered to life, and—

"Yes, you do."

Emily felt her courage vanish again as the face of a young Lorelei von Oldendorf stared back, the smile gone, the light dulled, but the orange hair and the green eyes and her voice were all there, and that _feeling_ again that she was back in the safety of her mother's arms, where she knew her mistakes wouldn't cost her parents' love, where she knew her father would not reach her—

The ZAKU flung her back with a swing from its beam saber and showered the Eclipse with beam blasts. Emily instinctively ducked away; the CaZEL roared up from behind and forced her back into a bone-jarring swordfight, and the ZAKU took its opportunity to dart around and swing at the Eclipse's exposed back. Emily hurled the Eclipse towards the ground and let the ZAKU's saber catch nothing but air; the CaVAL's furious fire from below forced her back skyward, where the ZAKU and CaZEL were waiting, blades blazing in the sun.

"They told me I'm supposed to be a clone of you or something," Zero-Two added. "Strange. I would have thought you'd be more impressive, if _I_ was a clone of _you_."

"N-No," Emily whispered, "not me..."

The CaZEL charged forward, swords held high. "Too much talking!" sneered Varder; Emily jetted to the left to let the CaZEL shoot by, then slammed it in the back with a hard kick to send it sailing towards the desert below. She whipped around and instinctively threw up the beam sword to deflect the charging ZAKU's downward saber strike.

"'Not me,' huh?" Zero-Two asked. "Then who?"

Emily swallowed hard. "Y-You're a clone of...my mother."

"Your _mother?_" Zero-Two glanced down at her hands, then looked back up at her trembling enemy. "Are you insulting me?"

"No! My mother had Newtype powers, and...I was born for them, and you..."

Zero-Two's eyes lit up in understanding. "Then I have everything I need," she said. The ZAKU threw the Eclipse back. "As for you...they _did_ warn me that you were the _failed_ version."

Emily winced; her mother, telling her she was a failure...? She shook her head and tried to remember Viveka's words.

"W-Who are you?"

The ZAKU's monoeye flashed and Zero-Two glared down at her foe.

"I am Unit Zero-Two, and I have been sent here to destroy you, Angel of Death."

The words went through Emily's heart like a knife—and a moment later, the ZAKU charged.

—

"I see they brought friends!" Trojan cried, as he wheeled the DOM Trooper around towards eight oncoming shapes—one of them absolutely enormous. He swallowed anxiously as he watched the approach of the massive ZAKU Ranger and its four Guul-mounted ZAKU escorts—plus a trio of BABIs and a pair of BuCUEs, along with the red ZAKUs.

"Tell you what," Lily offered, "I'll deal with the normal ones and you can go get rid of the Incredible Hulk over there."

Trojan ground his teeth, a plan coming together in the back of his mind. "You have yourself a deal," he said, and rocketed forward.

Overhead, the BABIs banked off towards the Vent Savior and joined the four red ZAKUs in spewing fire after her. It rapidly transformed and pounded two of the ZAKUs with return fire, but the second two rocketed over their allies' heads and rained missiles and beam bolts from a Blaze and a Slash Wizard down on her. The Vent Savior spiraled back towards the ground, the BABIs in hot pursuit; Lily pulled up and launched herself skyward, but the BABIs broke formation around her and the ZAKUs took their opportunity to open fire and force her off course.

"There's only seven of you!" Lily shouted. "And I'm the one with the Gundam!" The BABIs came around for another pass, beam rifles blazing. "That means _I win!_"

With a shout, Lily threw the Vent Savior forward, a beam saber blazing to life in its hand—and with an ear-splitting screech, she ripped one of the BABIs in half as it passed, and smiled with satisfaction as it exploded behind her.

"See?"

The remaining mobile suits intensified their fire, but Lily only grinned back as she dodged it and waited for her next opportunity.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Despair rippled out of the sky as the Gundam Eclipse falteringly did battle with the Providence ZAKU. It was delightful to watch. Rau Le Creuset curled his fists around the railing on the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck and watched with a smirk, even as an exploding missile sent a cloud of flame and smoke up over his field of vision. At long last, Emily would learn that everything in the world was corruptible—even the one thing she thought had been pure. And the only thing to do with that which was corrupt was destroy it.

The Eclipse fought its way through a storm of beam fire from that ramshackle green flying machine and the Providence ZAKU. Emily swatted the green mobile suit aside again and returned her attention to the ZAKU.

Of course, this little battle might distract her entirely. Perhaps she would try to rescue this clone from ZAFT and get deluded. Or maybe she would just recognize necessity and kill it; certainly she wasn't about to _fall_ to it. Shinn had trained her too well for that.

Sparks flew as the two mobile suits descended into a vicious aerial swordfight, the green mobile suit struggling to find a place in it. In any event, she would someday have to destroy this clone—and live with the searing pain of having lost her mother a second time. She was lonely and afraid already; drive her through that forest of despair and she wouldn't care if the whole world had to burn to soothe her broken heart.

Rau smiled as the two mobile suits crashed together again.

—

The pain went rippling over Shinn Asuka's consciousness as he sat at the back of the bridge, nervously watching the battle on the main screen—and even more nervously following the battle between those two enormously powerful Newtypes outside. The fear emanating from Emily was so much like her first sorties in the Twilight Gundam, seemingly so long ago. But that had been fear of combat and fear of death; this, this fear of a particular enemy, and fear laced with heartbreak and regret...

He closed his eyes and tried to will encouragement to her, but in her distracted state, there was no way she would be receptive.

And then there was Rau, making no effort to hide his delight down in the observation deck. Of course _he_ would enjoy this; he seemed to revel in the suffering of others. Misery truly did love company, evidently.

Shinn turned his eyes back to the battle and focused on Emily's presence. That other pilot felt like cold steel, polished and ready for its purpose, but remembered that to Emily it was so much more. And she barely fought it off, while at the same time swatting the other mobile suit away.

Someone in ZAFT knew her history, and knew exactly who would throw her off balance the most. Someone knew she would be stopped by the psychic image of her kindly mother in the heat of battle.

Shinn glanced up towards the sky and struggled to control his anger. Someone in ZAFT was going to pay.

—

"Okay," Trojan said, "if this is going to work the positioning has to be just right!"

The DOM Trooper rattled as a wave of beam fire kicked up the sand around it. The Gunner ZAKU Warrior drove him back with a pulsating blast from its cannon; the Blaze ZAKU Phantom up ahead dropped in from behind, beam rifle extended—

"I don't think so!" Trojan snapped; the DOM whipped around and deflected the blast with his right-hand beam shield, then darted aside the Gunner ZAKU leveled off its cannon to fire again. The other two ZAKUs and the Ranger followed him with a volley of beam shots, and Trojan risked a glance at the Ranger's cannon. At Banadiya, the two huge cooling systems on its right side had blown out a puff of steam three seconds before it fired. And apparently it had a charging period—

He threw the DOM aside and a flurry of smaller railgun shells tore past. Up ahead, two BuCUEs came galloping out of the cover afforded by the Ranger's massive body, beam sabers alight. The DOM wove its way around the ZAKUs firepower, then pulled back as the BuCUEs came charging in. Trojan clenched his fists as the BuCUEs lunged—Master Ho had taught him this—

Abruptly, he jammed back the DOM's controls and kicked upward with one of its wide feet, catching the first BuCUE's chin and throwing the entire mobile suit upwards on its hind legs. With another tooth-jarring kick to the BuCUE's exposed stomach, he smashed the first mobile suit back into its comrade—and with two beam shots, he speared them both through the torso and blew them apart.

The DOM ducked around from more beam blasts from the ZAKUs as Trojan glanced back up at his remaining foes. Up above, the Slash ZAKU Warrior came roaring down, twirling a beam axe over its head. Trojan dove under its horizontal slash and whipped around to blast it in the back, and then turned again, taking a moment to look over the battlefield. The _Lesseps_ was moving in from behind the _Minerva_ as the smoking, winged warship dodged blasts from the black _Eternal_. And the ZAKU Ranger had dug in, its cannon pointed straight at the _Minerva_—

The three remaining ZAKUs charged; the Blaze ZAKU Warrior lunged off its Guul and speared it on a beam shot, and with a thundering blast it exploded against the DOM Trooper's beam shield and threw the mobile suit back. The Gunner ZAKU Warrior and ZAKU Phantom dropped down between the DOM and the Ranger.

Then the steam burst out of the Ranger's vents; Trojan's chest tightened as he looked between the two ZAKUs between him and his foe, and the third one storming towards him. The Ranger was there, cannon pointed at the _Minerva_; the _Lesseps_ was just below, just a tiny adjustment to the right. If he didn't do something...

Instinct took over. He flung the DOM's Gigalauncher at a spot above the end of the Ranger's rail cannon barrel and prayed this would work. He snapped his beam rifle up and fired, piercing the bazooka magazine. The Gigalauncher exploded; the ZAKU Ranger lurched; the rail cannon fired—

The battlefield shuddered as the ZAKU Ranger's rail cannon slammed a shell directly through the _Arrhenius_, and the ship vanished in a plume of fire.

Trojan roared forward as he saw his chance, smoke washing over the battlefield, and slashed the oncoming ZAKU in half along the way. The ZAKU Ranger stared in apparent disbelief at the _Arrhenius_' smoking ruins; Trojan flung himself forward with a scream and activated the beam shield, plowing through the Ranger's translucent barrier. He landed with a crash on the Ranger's hull, just in front of the ZAKU torso. It looked up at him, as though shocked—and Trojan snapped up the beam rifle and pumped blasts into the ZAKU Ranger's center.

Throwing sparks, the giant mobile suit's monoeyes went dark. The DOM vaulted off the Ranger's body, the two smaller ZAKUs turning towards him in surprise—and then they disappeared as a thundering explosion claimed the ZAKU Ranger.

Trojan landed with a crash and a smirk at his handiwork. Master Ho would be proud.

—

The BABIs banked apart, along with the red ZAKUs, as the ZAKU Ranger down below burst apart. Lily grinned and seized her chance, whipping around and gunning down one of the BABIs with a plasma cannon burst. The ZAKUs intensified their fire; the Vent Savior rocketed over it, then swept back down towards the last BABI. It transformed to its mobile suit mode and brought around its chest-mounted Ardor cannon—

Lily ducked beneath the blast, then jerked back to kick the BABI upward—just as the ZAKUs above opened fire again and tore it apart in the crossfire.

"I love it when you guys do my work for me!" she laughed, and fired back with the plasma cannons to break their ranks apart again—and then the Slash ZAKU Warrior erupted into an explosion, pierced by a beam blast from below. Lily turned her eyes downward and found the DOM Trooper blasting away skyward with its beam rifle, forcing the three surviving ZAKUs on the defensive. "Hey, I thought we had a deal!"

"Deal's over!" Trojan shot back, and the beam fire drove the three ZAKUs apart. Lily charged forward, beam saber in hand, and before the Gunner ZAKU could react it was already cut in half. The two survivors backed away behind a screen of fire, one aiming for the Vent Savior and the other for the DOM Trooper.

And then, they abruptly dumped a load of combat flares into the air and rocketed into the distance.

Lily squinted under the harsh glare and glanced down towards the DOM Trooper. "The hell was all that about?"

Down below, Trojan merely grinned back up at the Vent Savior. "I kicked their asses, is what that was about."

—

"I was expecting a harder fight out of you," Zero-Two growled as the sabers clashed and sparks rained down on both mobile suits. Emily struggled to calm her trembling hands. "They told me you were an ace pilot."

Emily flung the Eclipse back to avoid the Providence ZAKU's saber blow—and instead the CaZEL fell upon her with its swords upturned. Emily growled in frustration and darted aside, and with a quick kick to the side of the head, sent the green mobile suit spiraling away. "I don't have time for you!"

The ZAKU slammed its spiked shoulder shield into the Eclipse and the black Gundam went reeling. Emily threw up the beam sword to deflect the ZAKU's saber. "Either way, let's get this over with!" Zero-Two shouted, and the ZAKU surged forward.

Emily clenched her teeth and slapped the attack aside, then rammed the Eclipse's shoulder into the ZAKU's chest. It staggered back and swung up its saber to deflect a blow from the Eclipse's beam sword; the black Gundam stormed forward anyway and pushed the ZAKU back.

"You're not her," Emily growled, her words sounding hollow in her ears, "you're not—"

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, little girl!" Varder screamed, and the CaZEL plunged out of the sky from above. Emily whipped around and threw her saber up to defend, but the blow sent her reeling anyway. "Not doing so hot there, angel girl! What's the matter? Don't wanna hurt mommy?"

"Shut up!" Emily snapped back. The CaZEL went back after her and slammed her sword with a long chain of relentless blows.

"Just as we expected, you couldn't handle it!" Varder roared. "You can kill us and humiliate us without a problem, but not when it's someone _you_ care about!"

Emily's eyes went wide. "You—?"

"Now!" The CaZEL brandished its swords and readied itself for the kill. "_See you in hell!_"

The seed burst—and an instant later, the CaZEL went flailing back as the Eclipse rocketed forward, smacked its swords aside, and pounded the green mobile suit back down towards the ground with a hard kick. The black Gundam charged forward, Voiture Lumiere system flashing to life; the Providence ZAKU backed away, filling the sky with beam blasts—

Zero-Two stared in disbelief as the Eclipse expertly wove its way through them all, and with a crash, it slammed its sword down onto the ZAKU's beam sword and drove it back. Zero-Two backed away and desperately flung her saber up to defend against the Eclipse's sword strikes.

"You're somewhere in there!" Emily shouted, "and I'll drag you out!"

Anger and despair crashed like waves against Zero-Two's mind. She flicked her eyes down towards the CaZEL, still reeling down below in the sand as the CaVAL helped it up—and then darted back and fired a combat flare into the charging Eclipse's face.

The Providence ZAKU ducked down below the Eclipse and swept down towards the two mobile suits below. Zero-Two glanced around the battlefield and scowled at the bitter taste of failure—but with her allies' forces so reduced, continuing the fight was hopeless...

"There you two are," Lilith Ramsi put in with a sigh. "The _Seraphim_'s ordering a retreat."

"No," Varder snarled, "not again, we _had_ her, Lilith! We—"

His line cut out as the CaVAL hoisted up the CaZEL and rocketed away towards the _Seraphim_. Zero-Two glanced up at her still-burning flare and the Eclipse, backing away from its blinding red light.

_So I'm your "mother," huh?_

The thrusters roared as the Providence ZAKU made good its escape.

—

Emily cracked her eyes open as the flare burned itself out and looked frantically around the battlefield—but the Providence ZAKU and its allies were already fading into the distance across the shimmering sands.

She watched it go desolately. Her enemies knew that Zero-Two was a clone of her mother, had chosen her specifically for that effect. They knew—and they knew that the image of her mother would slow her down in battle. How could they have known? And they had sent her—

A jolt of recognition shot up her spine.

_So you think I'm your mother,_ Zero-Two's voice echoed in her head. _Just because I'm a clone? Just because I make you feel the same way?_

_No!_ Emily shot back. _You _are_ like her! If you weren't, you wouldn't feel the same! And..._

_And what? You think you can save me?_

Emily's blood went cold. How—?

_I know what I am, Angel of Death,_ Zero-Two continued. _I am you, perfected. And there's nothing you can do about it._

The Providence ZAKU disappeared over the horizon. Emily stared after it, the words from the shadow of her mother echoing through her mind—but another voice sliced through the fog and sent a blinding bolt of pain throughout her body.

_She will be our angel of death_.

Darkness descended.

—

To be continued...


	32. Phase 32: Gigafloat

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 32 - Gigafloat

—

**May 26th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Mudug, Somalia**

"You seem to have a knack for surviving the infinite perils of infamy," chuckled Nathaniel Hatias on the _Minerva_'s bridge auxiliary screen. Slumped in the captain's chair, an exhausted Meyrin wondered if that was supposed to be a joke. If it was, she was way too tired to laugh.

"Where are you?"

"In the Red Sea. In about thirty hours we're going silent again to sneak past Socotra."

Meyrin blinked. "How on earth did you get through the Suez Canal without being spotted?"

Nathaniel grinned back. "Very carefully."

Silence reigned between the two for a moment, before Meyrin just shook her head. "Alright," she said, "then I suppose we'll see you at Gigafloat."

"Are you sure you don't want escort?"

"Yes. We'd have to wait, and we can't really afford to do that anymore." She glanced aside bitterly. "We've been on the defensive for far too long. It's starting to wear on us. I'm sure you understand."

Nathaniel tipped his hat. "Very well. I'll see you again at Gigafloat."

The screen went dark and Meyrin tried not to fall forward in her chair. Captain couldn't go passing out on the bridge. Besides, she had a bed that made a much more comfortable place to lose consciousness.

In the meantime, Meyrin Hawke had problems. The ship was still damaged, almost every watt of power was directed to the engines and the levitator, the last Tristan barrel had shorted out, and they only had three mobile suits.

And then there was Emily, off in the sickbay, with everyone waiting on pins and needles for her to wake up. So they had a new enemy, one that was a simulacrum of their own Angel of Death. Meyrin wondered if that should scare her—but she had done battle with the Devil's Swords and the vast _Charlemagne_ and the notorious Kira Yamato and a thousand Alliance and ZAFT units in between and still drew breath. What was one more super-powered foe with a frightening reputation?

And besides, she thought, it would be Emily's problem anyway.

—

The darkness receded and the first thing Emily von Oldendorf recognized as she crawled up from the black depths of unconsciousness were familiar presences around her. She cracked open an eye and there they all were: Viveka at her side, Athrun at _hers_, Shinn, Lily, and Trojan at the foot of her bed, all of them looking like they were holding their collective breath.

Emily blinked and stared up at the infirmary ceiling for a second. The memories drifted back—and so did the heartache.

"Welcome back," Shinn spoke up, a moment before Viveka dragged her into a bone-crushing hug.

"W-What happened?" Emily sputtered.

"We were hoping you could tell us," Athrun answered.

Emily laid back and closed her eyes, summoning back the memories to sort through them. Unit Zero-Two had fought her, sent to destroy her, designed to be what her own creators—what her father—had always meant for her to be. And yet it was what had happened to her mother.

But Zero-Two was not her mother. She reminded herself of that as forcefully as she could.

"I don't know," she lied. She cringed after that. Nobody appeared to believe her.

—

Abbey Windsor scratched her head in mounting anxiety at the sight before her. The sight was water—and it wasn't supposed to be there.

In a more detailed vein, the sight was the view out the _Minerva_'s prow. There wasn't supposed to be a view out the _Minerva_'s prow, but that giant rail cannon-wielding machine at Banadiya had decided otherwise, and now the Tannhäuser had been reduced to a crater. Abbey herself stood on one of the maintenance catwalks, far back from where the Tannhäuser would have been, surveying the damage. Gigafloat's mechanics would have to replace a wide swath of the prow and the entire positron cannon assembly. The Junk Guild was going to be a bunch of busy beavers; already she suspected they were having to call in favors and smugglers to rebuild the Tannhäuser itself. The _Minerva_ was a demanding ship.

She sighed heavily and glanced back down at her tablet. The _Minerva_ was a demanding ship, but it was also an aging ship, and it was a ship that its enemies were beginning to figure out. Laminated armor was useless against a railgun shell accelerated to a sufficient velocity, and the ridiculous number of guns the _Charlemagne_ carried could overwhelm it. And against that, the _Minerva_ could count on only the same sorts of weapons and abilities it had always used. They could get new mobile suits at Gigafloat, but the ship they were required to defend would necessarily limit their potential.

That was the most frustrating part of all this. For three years, the _Minerva_ had darted around the Earth Sphere and given the Earth Alliance nightmares—and with its cadre of only five Gundams, all veterans of the Junius War. Now it had more pilots than mobile suits and ever since ZAFT had returned, they had been on the run, on the defensive, beaten back, escaping by the skin of their teeth. Even their victories—at Terminal, at Sagan City, at Fernando de Noronha—all bore the ashen taste of escape and survival, rather than that of striking blows against enemies.

She clenched her fists around the tablet and drove the negative thoughts down. That was no way to win the war; they were going to Gigafloat, they would replace their lost mobile suits with new machines that would outmatch everything else, and the _Minerva_ would go back on the offensive. It would be so.

Abbey looked back up at the ruined Tannhäuser. _Anything_ would be better than all this.

—

When one lived in a fluctuating life of possibilities and potentialities, one learned not to make a plan that could not be modified at the last minute. Good things came to those who waited, but they rarely had the courtesy to phone ahead. It was a skill that had served Rau Le Creuset well over the years—when little treats like an appointment to FAITH, an impressionable young disciple, and access to a Newtype of staggering power and boundless potential simply dropped into his lap—and as time went on, its exercise grew easier.

And now appeared another good thing to the man who had waited. Unit Zero-Two would fit nicely into his plans. Emily needed to understand in the starkest and most painful terms possible that this world was beyond salvation, that this world needed to be judged. What better tool than to have to fight the shade of her own mother?

Rau sat back in his bunk and scanned over the screen of his computer terminal. Information was naturally scarce on ZAFT's internal workings these days; an army of zealots was difficult to infiltrate, especially when they had two Newtype leaders. At the very least, this put to rest the question of what had happened to Lorelei von Oldendorf's clone.

Lorelei von Oldendorf. What had she been like? Certainly not the sort to sit in a mobile suit and do battle with her daughter. Sickly and overshadowed by her ruthless husband, no doubt. But her presence sapped Emily's will to fight.

She would have to learn. Perhaps Athrun would be of help here—another unexpected use for what had previously been a liability. Yes, the plan was flexible—but so were all the best plans.

—

Viveka von Oldendorf hated to think she was going soft, but it was certainly comforting having someone to just hold her while she brooded and worried. It was something she could get used to—and Athrun Zala was pretty good at just holding her while she brooded and worried.

Together they stood on the _Minerva_'s external deck and watched as the grasslands and deserts of Somalia faded into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Stella probably would've loved it if she weren't still cooped up in the infirmary. Viveka settled into the crook of Athrun's arm and looked out towards the horizon. Somewhere out there was Gigafloat, a whole new world of things that would hopefully distract her from all this..._drama_.

"Well," she added, "I hope _you_ don't have some secret dramatic past with _your_ mother."

Athrun frowned. "My mother died on Junius 7."

"O-Oh..."

"Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago." He blew out a tired breath through his nose. "And I'm glad she didn't have to see what it turned my father into."

Viveka blinked. "Oh yeah. I guess we're not the only ones with crazy parents."

"It's alright. He can't hurt anyone anymore." Athrun paused as memories of terrorists around a falling space colony trickled back into his mind. "Though that hasn't stopped him from trying..."

"That's the thing," Viveka sighed. "Our mother would have never even thought of doing anything like that. She was kindness incarnate. Every time our father would cross the line with us, she'd be there to comfort us and make it all seem better." She shook her head. "But I was never really that close to her. Emily was, so...well, whoever came up with this idea is a sick son of a bitch."

Athrun looked towards the sky. Somewhere up there was Messiah, the headquarters of ZAFT—and Kira. "Someone up there knows your family's history," he said. "Well enough to know that Emily would have trouble fighting someone who gave off the same pressure as her mother."

"What are we going to do about it?"

The answer was all too obvious. But Emily would have to see that for herself—and do it. And in this, she would be on her own.

"Athrun," Viveka said quietly, "you fought that clone of your friend, in that reentry battle where you lost the Justice." She glanced up and met his eyes, and Athrun almost shivered at the fear and sorrow he saw flickering across her expression. "And you told me afterwards that you realized that even if you saved the clone, it wouldn't be the same. It wasn't your friend. Right?"

"Yes."

"Then can you talk to Emily about that? It's...well, your situation is the only thing I can think of that's similar."

Athrun frowned and looked back towards the horizon. "I'll talk to her," he said, "but my situation was different."

"I know. Just...I don't want her to suffer through this anymore than she has to."

Silence descended over them both for a moment, before Athrun let out another sigh.

"That's up to her."

—

**May 27th, CE 77 - Athens Naval Installation, Greece, Eurasian Federation**

The sounds of the dockyard at work blended into a dull roar from the high observation deck where Kelly Maynard decided to take her break. The cigarette smoke curled up above her as she blew out another breath and stared down towards the dock—and the massive black warship within it. This was a hell of a way to get an education.

She shook her head and took another drag. Of course, by now she was probably too old to go to a real school. There was nothing to stop a twenty-eight-year-old woman from going to college, really, but she wouldn't fit in with all those fresh-faced little brats out of high school who thought they were adults. She knew what created an adult. She would be out of place. There was nothing to stop her...but it would just be _weird_.

It wasn't really supposed to go this way. She was supposed to sign on for three years to gain that cushy benefit whereby the military would pay her college costs if she went through the punishing officer-training regimen. Then the Junius War happened and suddenly the military was offering boatloads of money for enlistees with expiring contracts to stay on, and how could she say no to that? And then the Junius War ended and the Resistance came to life and the Phantom Pain began to metastasize and _they_ started offering money for recruits, and she couldn't very well say no to _that_ either, and so here she was, having spent so much time working to pay for college that she couldn't really go to college anymore.

Funny how that worked, really.

Kelly tossed the useless butt to the floor and ground it out beneath her boot. Well, life was cheap as a Phantom Pain officer and all that sweet bonus money would just pad her account back home. If only she knew what to do with it when this was all over.

If this would _ever_ be all over.

—

The official name of the complex was the Mobile Oceangoing Segmented Mass Driver Facility. MOSMDF made for a completely unpronounceable acronym, however, so the common name for the construct was Gigafloat. And by its massive Junk Guild logos and complete lack of armaments, it was supposed to be a completely neutral civilian facility.

And judging by the recon satellites and high-altitude spy planes, it was also the last great collection of Resistance forces on Earth—and it was where the _Minerva_ was going for repairs.

Ivan Danilov shifted uncomfortably in the briefing room as some Navy captain whose name he had already forgotten launched into a discourse on Gigafloat's history before the assembled Navy and Phantom Pain officers. Danilov already knew what he needed to know about the massive seagoing platform. The Alliance had helped build it as a civilian infrastructure project in the years before the Valentine War, and continued with an eye towards using it during the conflict with ZAFT.

Then the Junk Guild declared its neutrality, invoked its majority ownership stake in the platform, and locked them out. Rondo Ghina Sahaku had tried to destroy it and retain Orb's monopoly on independent mass drivers; that hadn't gone so well for Sahaku. Jona Roma Seiran had tried to destroy it two years later for harboring the Orb Raiders, enemies of his family's political control over Orb; that hadn't gone so well for Seiran either. And at the outset of this war, the Junk Guild and Gigafloat's administrator had declared their neutrality. Nobody truly believed that the Junk Guild was neutral in this conflict, but there was a catch.

Danilov grimaced as the briefing officer got to that part. The deal had included making Gigafloat the site for decommissioning old nuclear weapons, and that meant they had a collection of about thirty thermonuclear devices awaiting disposal. That was why they were neutral; the blind monk who ran the thing was a more or less trusted party by all sides. But that trust was wearing thin, and now that the Resistance was gathering in what Reverend Malchio called "a neutral facility open to all who require refuge," it was clear something would have to be done.

At that thought, Danilov's stomach turned. Whether or not Gigafloat had the N-Jammer Cancellers necessary to make any of those nuclear weapons useful was up in the air, but the Alliance was not interested in taking chances. And that meant he, Ivan Danilov, and the _Charlemagne_ would have to spearhead an effort to take control of Gigafloat and its cache of nukes before the Resistance could get its grubby little hands on them—and before the platform could be seized or destroyed by ZAFT.

Danilov cringed as the briefing officer veered off into a long discussion of Gigafloat's technical specifications. There were other things to the platform too: a massive refugee camp and a vast hospital put the truth to Malchio's claim that Gigafloat's mission was primarily humanitarian. But it was also an asset for the Alliance's enemies, and no war could be won without depriving the enemy of valuable assets.

Which meant another war crime for Ivan Danilov to aid and abet.

He bowed his head as the briefing officer continued on. This war was making villains of them all.

—

_He knows. He knows. He knows all about me, Sven._

Sven Cal Bayan rolled onto his other side in his bunk on the _Charlemagne_ and tried to drown out the voice with mind-numbing technical specs on the Crusader's beam wing system. It was useless, of course; the little boy would not be distracted.

_He can save you. He knows that you're not a monster. He knows that deep down I'm still here, and if he can reach me__—_

_I do _not_ need to be _saved, Sven shot back.

_Is that why you're arguing with yourself?_

Sven clenched his teeth. Using the Psyco System had been such a mistake. Those walls didn't hold up just his identity; apparently, they supported his sanity too.

_You hate doing this,_ the child went on. _Deep down you know it. You don't want to be doing all this killing and fighting, and now there's finally a way out._

_No_, Sven answered, _there is not._

He knew better. Defection meant death. Nobody in the Resistance would accept him after all the Resistance fighters he had killed and all the time he had spent as the warrior for Lord Djibril's new order. They would imprison him, at the very least, and he would be at their mercy until someone decided to just get it over with and kill him. That little child knew nothing of the world out here. He could never give in; his old self, the self that had survived and persisted despite his attempts to bury it, didn't understand how cruel the world could be. Only when his parents had died and he'd been sent to become a lackey for Blue Cosmos had he learned how cruel the world could be—and that was when that old part of him had been locked away.

Locked away, but it could still shout through the bars of its cell, and Sven ground his teeth as it proceeded to do just that.

—

The _Nana Buluku_ was back in its homeport at Althea Crater. That was something of a relief, really; Gerhardt von Oldendorf would hate to have thought that someone was reassigning his own little Mirage Colloid-equipped heavily armed special operations warship. God forbid they should actually use it for its intended purpose or something.

Gerhardt quietly packed up the tiny office he had occupied at Athens ever since the _Charlemagne_'s return to port. It had been an educational little outing, at least; seeing Emily in battle had been entertaining, if nothing else. Half her moves had come from her training, but he couldn't really fault her for that. Waste not, want not, after all.

He would have to be back in space anyways, though, because that was where this war would be decided. These little life and death struggles on Earth were all dramatic and destructive, but the story, as it were, was running out of space on the planet's surface. The Alliance had finally found the remnants of Chiao Xu's forces in their place of refuge on Gigafloat, and soon they would have erased that little mistake. And then everything would return to space, where the Resistance's fleet was still formidable and ZAFT still had the majority of its forces. And surely Marshal Sunogachi had something more up her sleeve than mere slaughter of civilians.

And so the world turned, events ebbed and flowed, and Gerhardt von Oldendorf, always with his ear to the currents of the present, would have to move with them. But the world had little tolerance for those who would change it, and paid little attention to those who made no appearance of resisting it. And if Gerhardt was going to reclaim control over his wayward daughter, he'd have to follow the flow until it deposited him in front of destiny.

—

**Heaven's Base, Iceland**

Lord Djibril slumped down into his office chair after another session of fending off the press jackals over his chosen strategy for the ZAFT incursion. He'd lost track of how many times he had explained this; between all that debris and that nigh-impenetrable beam shield, a frontal attack on Messiah would be a gruesome affair no matter what. Better to crumble away ZAFT's fleet before going after the real prize.

He sat up and straightened himself out. After all, he had a meeting impending—and as though on cue, the office door slid open and into the room stepped Jona Roma Seiran, clad in the green uniform of the Governor-General.

"I'd forgotten how cold Iceland is," Jona said with a shrug, and shook Djibril's hesitantly offered hand and sat down on the other end of the desk.

"I'll get right to the point, governor," Djibril said, and folded his hands over his desk. "We have run out of patience for this Sahaku woman of yours in space. Her station has been supporting the Resistance for years, and it's time to rub out a troublesome parasite."

Jona looked satisfied. "I fully agree, sir. She's been around for far too long."

"Which is why you will be taking the Orb Space Fleet to finish her off."

Jona's look of satisfaction. "I...but, sir—"

"You have seven _Izumo_-class battleships at your disposal and the ten other ships of the OSF. Surely you'll have enough to destroy the station."

"Perhaps," Jona hedged, "but—"

"To be quite frank, governor," Djibril added, and at his unspoken command Misa emerged from the shadows to stand menacingly behind the governor-general's shoulder, "ever since that little debacle at Onigashima, your contribution to our war effort has been less than complete. Now, the Resistance has used _Ame-no-Mihashira_ as a base throughout this conflict. We have left it to you to deal with her, and yet dealt with she is not. Now ZAFT is back in the Earth Sphere and any asset of the Resistance is potentially an asset for ZAFT. I'm sure you understand the necessity of this measure."

Jona looked between Misa and Djibril, and the gray-haired man felt a twinge of satisfaction as his subordinate resigned himself to circumstances. "Perfectly, sir."

—

**May 28th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

Meyrin Hawke fell back into the captain's chair as the _Minerva_ rumbled and the bridge went dark, and savored the feeling of relief. At last she could rest easy for a while. The mission was complete.

The _Minerva_ shuddered into its dry-dock underneath Gigafloat, and a massive elevator began to raise the battered ship up into an equally vast hangar studded with cranes and machinery, safe from the prying eyes of spy satellites and planes. And this facility wasn't part of the ZAFT remnant; it was nominally the Junk Guild that owned this place, but it was brimming with Resistance fighters from all over the world. The ones who had heeded Chiao Xu's summons to Carpentaria and somehow not died there, at least.

Meyrin pulled herself together and made her way with Abbey to the airlock hatch. The heavy door swung open and Meyrin straightened out her coat—although for this particular visitor, such a gesture was rather unnecessary.

But as Reverend Malchio stepped across the threshold, white-banded cane tapping at the floor as he went, one got the distinct impression that the blind man saw perfectly fine. He certainly had no problem seeing necessity, or the true nature of people, or the good—or the evil—to be found in them.

Meyrin straightened up. "Reverend Malchio," she started, and the reverend smiled back.

"Captain Hawke. I'm glad to hear you and your ship have made it here in one piece."

Meyrin shook his offered hand. "In a manner of speaking, sir."

"Please, captain, I'm not your superior officer." Meyrin and Abbey followed him down the boarding tunnel—and through the windows, the former took the opportunity to take in the vast and breathtaking sweep of the mighty Gigafloat. Fifty kilometers long, equipped with a massive hospital, extensive facilities for refugees, a facility for decommissioning nuclear weapons, and the immense mass driver, it all made Gigafloat a very important asset—for the Junk Guild, for the Resistance, and for Reverend Malchio.

But it also made them all targets. And Reverend Malchio was a great man, but he was no warrior.

Meyrin held back a sigh as Malchio began to expound on what Gigafloat had to offer the _Minerva_ this time around. Even her moments of rest weren't restful.

—

It was decided. Lowe Gear gave the best hugs ever.

There were lots of things at which Lowe Gear was the best or close enough, and most of them were related to machinery, but his secret talent for bone-crushing, forget-about-everything-else-in-the-desperate-struggle-to-breathe bear hugs was second to none. And indeed, Athrun Zala really was unaware of any other troubles in the world as Lowe Gear overenthusiastically squeezed the life out of him.

Lowe finally put Athrun down with a grin on his face a light year across. "Athrun Zala! How the hell are ya, man?"

Athrun coughed. "Intact, I guess."

"Couldn't say the same for the Gundam, I guess," Lowe said with an awkward scratch on the back of his head. "But hey! Good news! We have new ones! For you!"

"Yeah, about that," Viveka spoke up, and Athrun idly hoped—for Lowe's sake—that he decided not to try the bear hug thing on her. "What's this I hear about them being 'still unfinished?'"

"Hey, you can't rush greatness," Lowe sputtered. "Besides, we're still waiting for our weapons specialist to get here. He was supposed to be here by plane, but that didn't work out, so he's taken the, uh, slower route." He shrugged. "Sorry."

"Slower," Athrun said. "Should be worried?"

"Oh, not at all," Lowe laughed, "Dr. Freeman can take care of himself. Come on, it's Christmas in May, I'm Santa Claus, and you two are on the nice list this year."

—

"So," Trojan said uneasily, "you feeling better today?"

On one of the many observation corridors overlooking the vast tableau of Gigafloat, Emily stared out over the platform and the ocean beyond and considered Trojan's question. The answer was no, but that would just make him worry and shuffle her back to the infirmary.

"Yes," she lied.

Trojan didn't appear to buy it, but nor did he appear interested in an argument, so he followed her gaze out to the sea. "So what happened out there with that gray ZAKU anyway?"

Emily hung her head. "It's...a long story."

"I've got time."

"I know." She paused as she chose her words. "It's...hard to describe, but whenever I fight that gray ZAKU, I feel like I'm back with my mother." She looked back up at Trojan, finding him not understanding—but how could he if he wasn't a Newtype? "She was...well, you met my father, so you know how my relationship with _him_ was."

"Yeah," Trojan said, and idly rubbed the back of his neck. "I take it your relationship with your mother was better?"

Emily nodded. "And when I have to fight that ZAKU...it feels like I'm fighting against her."

She looked back up at him, and knew that he didn't really understand. And how could he? But he held out his arms anyway, she fell into them anyway, and she decided that she really didn't care as she sobbed into his chest.

—

The sea was just as she'd left it. That was another thing Stella Loussier loved about the sea. It didn't go and change behind her back.

At long last, between the accelerated Extended healing and a lot of nagging, the _Minerva_'s doctor had finally decided to let Stella roam free of the infirmary, and she had wasted no time getting off the ship and onto the great cityscape of Gigafloat. The _Minerva_ was hidden inside in a protected dry-dock as the repairs began, and somewhere else in here was a secret hangar where the Resistance had built a whole team of new Gundams, including one to replace her poor ruined Gaia. Stella would look at it later. She was sure it would be good enough, but it couldn't really replace the Gaia. The Gaia had gone with her everywhere. It was her friend. And she was saddened to lose her friend.

But, like the sea, the Gaia would always be there, one way or another. She still had the good memories of the Gaia keeping her safe, and maybe the new Kali Gundam would be just as good a friend to her as the Gaia had been.

Stella trotted down the walkways that gave the best view of the ocean. They were going to throw what was left of the Gaia here when they were done with it; a burial at sea, they'd called it. That was a little comforting. Whenever she saw the sea, she'd know that her old friend was down there, keeping company with the fishes. At least they wouldn't be lonely.

There were a lot of her friends who weren't alive anymore. But when she got to thinking about that, she would get sad, and she'd have to stop.

After all, nobody who was ever her friend would want her to be sad. Friends just didn't do that.

—

It was all supposed to be secret, done in the dead of night with only the light of heavy searchlights to guide the great _Aristotle_ into a secret point underneath Gigafloat's platforms. From the observation deck high above the hidden internal berth, Sting and Auel watched skeptically as the vast submarine barely managed to squeeze into the largest dock space available. Four hundred meters was an awful lot of space, after all.

"So let me get this straight," Auel said with a sigh. "That thing was supposed to go attacking Alliance bases and merchant shipping and stuff all over the world?"

"Yeah."

"All by itself?"

"Yep."

"How?"

Sting waved at the enormous intakes stretching off the sides of the submarine's hull. "Those things. They suck water in through the front and squirt it out the back. Works really quietly, so unless you knew what to look for, you'd never find it."

Auel frowned. "Sounds like something out of some bullshit story."

"Tell me about it." The dock shook as the latches clamped down into place, the roar of rushing water filled the cavernous chamber as the doors shut, and the crews started pumping out the water.

"But now I guess we find out just how much these guys are on our side," Auel sighed.

"They didn't do anything to us in Banadiya."

"Yeah," Auel said with a shrug, "but so what? Didn't stop the guys at Carpentaria from taking a swing at us."

Sting thought back bitterly to the days that seemed so long ago, and the ashen taste of fighting and triumphing over what he'd thought were his allies. "Yeah," he agreed, "it didn't."

—

**May 29th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

Mirage Colloid was a wonderful thing, and Valentine Sunogachi truly had to thank the Earth Alliance for inventing such a wonderful contraption.

For it was Mirage Colloid that hid behind its light-bending prisms the last great hope of the Coordinator people. The gargantuan reach of the ZAKU Goliath was taking shape. Two hundred and sixty one meters tall and armed with dozens of CIWS emplacements, anti-air beam cannons, missile launchers, and a beam shield as strong as the one mounted on Messiah, it was a fleet rolled into one massive pile of armament. And it would bring the Naturals to their knees.

The ten all-range DRAGOON attack pods and the one hundred DRAGOON-equipped unmanned ZAKU Drones would be taxing even to one Newtype. It would require two. Kira had demonstrated the power of their little test subject and given them one Newtype unit, and as for the second...well, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

She breathed in the atmosphere of hatred around her. The black tendrils of fear were starting to worm their way up through the anger and hate, still carefully fueled by the twin furnaces of propaganda and memory. The rank and file knew now of the _Aristotle_'s treachery; the destruction of Glasgow's task force at Sagan City and Willard's force at Belém had been a pair of blows to morale; and the loss of the ZAKU Ranger in the Ogaden Desert was no cause for celebration either. Now rumor had it that the Alliance had submarines scouring the Pacific for an "alleged ZAFT installation on the ocean floor." Commandant Kovetz would be in for a surprise soon. And every day, the ZAFT fleet took losses and injuries it could not afford; every day, the Earth Alliance relentlessly chipped away at Marshal Sunogachi's grand army.

This was not how it was supposed to go. Not for them. But for Valentine it was all just irrelevancies piled upon irrelevancies. They could be sacrificed; they had played their part. And so long as the ZAKU Goliath was completed, nothing else would matter.

—

**May 30th, CE 77 - Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

"A pleasure doing business with you, Senator Alvarez," said Senator Meyers with his typical veneer of faked sincerity, and promptly hung up on the senior senator from New Mexico. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee was a useful ally to have—after all, he who controlled the purse strings controlled the world—but damned if he wasn't a long-winded bag of hot air.

Meyers sat back in his office chair with a heavy sigh and mentally ran over his to-do list. President _pro tempore_ of the Senate was a lofty and busy job, but it was still only a stepping-stone, and Meyers would need to work quickly. MacIntyre had passed along more information, this one about an impending attack on the Junk Guild mass driver platform Gigafloat.

Of course, that would be in violation of more international laws than Meyers could count. Djibril might be able to get away with it by finally publicly turning on the Junk Guild, counting on it being common knowledge that the Junk Guild was passing support to the Resistance, but it would still cost him a pretty political penny. Every move he made these days seemed to accrue to Meyers' benefit; President Vasserot was already under fire for his part in Djibril's unpopular strategy to deal with ZAFT.

He supposed he couldn't really blame the imperious Earth Alliance president for it, though. If Meyers had been in Djibril's position he would probably have done the same. The Junk Guild and its mass driver were dangerous wild cards in a world already far enough off the rails.

The senator rubbed his temples and put away the frustration of this toothless office in the Senate. He would not be here for long; soon he would be at the top of the totem pole, and then everything in this town would be different.

—

**May 31st, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

Down below in one of Gigafloat's many cavernous hangars, the technicians were reassembling an overhauled Dagger L. Its pieces were strewn about like a nightmarish jigsaw puzzle and the din of a mobile suit being reconstructed was frequently punctured by shouting and cursing.

It wasn't exactly soothing, but to Emily von Oldendorf, standing on a gantry high above the hangar and watching the slightly morbid process, it was distracting—and that was almost as good. She glanced up in surprise as Viveka found her way down the gantry, and wondered how her sister had tracked her all the way down here.

"You missed breakfast," Viveka said with a smile.

"That was intentional."

"Oh come on, freeze-dried scrambled eggs are good for you. Builds character."

Emily frowned and decided that her character could go without another mouthful of spongy mockery of scrambled eggs.

"Anyways," Viveka went on, "what are you doing up here? I thought you didn't like hanging around mobile suit hangars."

"I was...bored."

Viveka arched the eyebrow over her good eye. "Bored."

"Yeah." Emily squirmed, but before she could say anything else, Viveka wrapped a comforting arm around her.

"Well, 'bored' one, we could always take that tour of the place that the ensign offered..."

Emily sighed in defeat. "I wanted to do something that would keep me from thinking," she said, "and watching the mechanics cuss at each other while they put that thing back together was kind of working."

"I think you need to talk to Athrun."

"He won't understand."

Viveka frowned and shifted her arm to look down reproachfully at her sister. "Of course he will."

Emily finally turned herself out of Viveka's embrace and headed for the door. "It's my problem," she said. "I'll deal with it."

And before Viveka could stop her, she was already gone.

—

Shinn Asuka didn't need to look to know that Meyrin Hawke was approaching. The simmering cauldron of emotions said it all.

He had occupied the for-once deserted bridge of the _Minerva_ to fiddle with the mapping console—and to think. Evidently, Meyrin had the same idea, because she swept onto the bridge with a miserable sigh—and then stopped short when she noticed Shinn in front of her.

"Sorry," he said before she could speak. "Bad day?"

Meyrin rubbed her temples and slumped into the nearest chair. "Father Malchio isn't like Chiao Xu," she groaned, "but that just makes him worry about him more."

Shinn took the seat next to hers. "Uh oh. What happened?"

"He suspects the Alliance is going to start moving against the Junk Guild. Spies stalking certain agents, more network security breaches, a couple of arrests..." She shook her head. "We'll have to repair and get the new Gundams done quickly and get out of here."

That wasn't all, Shinn could see. He reached out and put a comforting hand on her shoulder, to her surprise.

"It's not your job to worry about everything."

Meyrin blinked. "Wha—yes it is. If I don't, who does?"

"Malchio can take care of himself. He's kept Gigafloat running for six years and just about everyone on Earth has had a crack at him. But you," he squeezed her shoulder, "need to take care of yourself too."

"Everyone is depending on me—"

"Exactly," Shinn cut her off, "and that's why you can't go trying to put everything on your own shoulders. It won't fit and you'll just crush yourself anyways. We're all tired and we all need to take this moment to rest."

Meyrin frowned as she glanced at the silent bridge. "The captain can't do that—"

"And," Shinn interrupted, reclaiming her attention, "you don't have to prove to us that you're the captain." Meyrin blinked again, thunderstruck. "This is your ship now, Meyrin. You've commanded it for longer than Talia. You've made it into a symbol of the Resistance. Ever since Carpentaria the rest of us have been getting our asses kicked, but you always pulled us through and brought the ship home safe at the end of the day." He waved a hand at the vacant captain's chair. "And the captain gets to rest too."

Meyrin looked back at the chair, and then pulled Talia's old white cap off her head. "I...Shinn, Talia was trained to do this. She was _meant_ to do it. I wasn't."

"None of us were meant to do the things we've had to do in this war," Shinn said with a shrug. "The real measure of people is whether or not they can do it anyway. And here we are, Captain Hawke."

For a moment, Meyrin looked down at Talia's old hat, and then over at Talia's old command chair, and a smile broke over her face.

—

**June 1st, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, orbit of Earth**

The interior observation deck was silent as Kira Yamato watched the other ship pass by. The jet-black hull of the _Seraphim_ was almost invisible against the inky sky of space, but for the running lights and the white fins. Kira winced at the overwhelming feeling of pressure coming from inside the black ship as it banked away, towards Lagrange Point 5—towards Messiah.

It was the relic of another fiasco for ZAFT. The _Arrhenius_, the ZAKU Ranger, Commander Esram, all of them lost before the _Minerva_. It was almost intolerable. They were known so well in the Earth Sphere for their stable of Gundams—the ones that ZAFT had built, Kira remembered bitterly. But ZAFT had shattered those swords and broken the mighty _Minerva_'s claim to fame...and yet here they were, resisting as strong as ever. Now they were at Gigafloat, and surely they were going to replace those lost mobile suits sooner or later. The Resistance would spare no expense for the warship that symbolized their cause.

But all was not lost. The pressure was fading as the _Seraphim_ roared off into the distance, but it was still present, still distinct. Zero-Two had done rather well in keeping the Nightfall off-balance; as expected, her relation to the Nightfall's pilot had proven an invaluable trump card.

A pang of guilt shot through Kira's heart. Surely she was suffering, having to fight the specter of her mother. He battered the feeling down. She would stand in the way of his new, better world. If Unit Zero-Two and the shade of Emily von Oldendorf's mother were what it took to preserve that dream, then so be it. The sacrifice would be worth it.

Kira turned his eye towards the _Seraphim_'s destination, the faraway shoal zone that hid Messiah. Sacrifice. It would be quite a theme in the coming weeks. The ZAKU Goliath was nearing completion, and once it was finished, Valentine would throw into motion her final plan for decisively defeating the Alliance's military and carving out a place of sanctuary for the Coordinators, once and for all. And it would be the sorest test he'd ever face of his Newtype powers. His stomach turned at the thought. All that death...

But Kira Yamato was no stranger to death. He thought back to Fllay—and to _her_ death. If that was the price his new world would demand, then so be it. It would be worth it.

It would _have_ to be worth it.

—

**June 2nd, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

_She will be our angel of death_.

Emily clenched her teeth and turned around on her other side. Gerhardt von Oldendorf had been making quite a few cameos in her dreams of late, and his echoing voice was beginning to wear her patience thin. Every time he spoke, it reminded her that she was becoming what he had wanted her to be—and every time he spoke, she remembered what else he had said, about her mother.

Her mother. Emily squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to let the tears flow. She wanted her mother again, no matter how silly it sounded; she wanted the safety and feeling that she was loved, the comforting embrace of someone who could tell her what to do in these miserable situations. Perhaps with these Newtype abilities of hers, she might have even been closer to her mother than ever before. Maybe she could have saved her.

That made the pain even worse. Because where she had Gerhardt on one side, bludgeoning her with the destiny he had chosen for her, on the other side she had the image of her mother—and the cold reality of Unit Zero-Two.

They couldn't understand. There was no way. Viveka had never been close to her mother. Athrun had hated the person whose clone he was trying to kill. Shinn...well, his parents had died years ago. The only one who might understand what it was like for her to have her own heart turned against her was Rau...and even that was doubtful.

_She will be our angel of death._

Emily tightened her fists and tried to banish the voice with thoughts of her mother—but even that was corrupted.

—

To be continued...


	33. Phase 33: The Reverend Malchio

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 33 - The Reverend Malchio

—

**June 3rd, CE 77 - Socotra Naval Installation, Yemen**

Vice Admiral Joseph Krane of the Earth Alliance Navy was like a stereotypical pirate drawn from the most sensationalist of history books. With his bushy beard and his tanned, leathery-looking skin, he was every bit the crusty sea admiral of days bygone.

He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Blue Cosmos. That thought made Ivan Danilov's stomach turn. He never did like those people—and it had never helped that Blue Cosmos devotees had ordered the Cyclops System's use at Alaska, killing thousands of Eurasian Federation troops in the process.

Admiral Krane was probably the logical choice from Djibril's point of view to lead an attack on Gigafloat, though. Few other men would take such joy in demolishing a civilian platform said to be helping Coordinators.

The admiral tapped his baton on the Socotra briefing room's strategic map. "You're going to have to lead the attack, Captain Danilov," he said. "The _Charlemagne_'s firepower will be necessary to break through the enemy's defenses. Fifty kilometers of floating platform will demand a long defensive line. They won't be hard to crack."

"I understand, sir," Danilov said with a nod. Of course, the _Charlemagne_ would be responsible for this, and he would have to pull the trigger again.

—

The smoldering stare of Yukiko Nakajima bored into Sven Cal Bayan's brain in the examination room. An EEG reader rose and fell as his brainwaves fluctuated—and deep in the back of his mind, Sven could tell that she knew exactly what had happened to him. She'd planned this. Intended it. Once his barriers had been broken down, technically speaking, there was nothing to stop his development.

Nothing, that is, except himself. Because equally deep in the back of his mind, there _was_ something stopping him from simply cutting the beast loose and turning himself over to his instincts and training. If he did that, he would never again have control—and then he would be no better than a measly Extended.

Yukiko glanced furtively at the EEG screen. "Much more activity than I expected," she said. "Almost like there's two people in there."

Sven ground his teeth and the brainwaves spiked.

_Ooh,_ the kid spoke up, _she's good_.

"But at any rate," she went on, "I suppose this is all a moot point, now that the Destiny is destroyed."

The Destiny. Sven twitched angrily at the thought. The Destiny was destroyed, yes, the spies in Banadiya had confirmed as such—but the pilot still lived. The pilot knew now—knew that there was more to Sven Cal Bayan than orders and duty. And he would try to save him. Of course he would; Sven had felt their enmity flicker and fade the instant the walls came down and Shinn Asuka glimpsed into his soul. It would never be the same again between them. Now every time they met in battle, Shinn Asuka would have something to seek in his enemy.

And every time they met in battle, Sven would have to wrestle down the part of him that wanted to be saved.

—

"In my admittedly unprofessional opinion," Travis Alterman said airily in the Nebula Blitz's tightly sealed cockpit, "Captain Danilov will soon reach his limit on the degree of brutality in which he's willing to participate."

He sat back and regarded the words on the screen for a moment. That sounded pretty good.

Ivan Danilov's last briefing had been something of a confusing affair. He had ordered his troops not to target the civilian and humanitarian facilities on Gigafloat—but since the mission was to destroy the whole platform, nobody was sure how to do that. And when the same was pointed out for the captain, he seemed to be rather taken aback and almost defeated when he ordered his pilots to simply do what they could. The technical readouts of Gigafloat seemed to suggest that it was possible, given some very precise firepower and extraordinary discipline from the mobile suit pilots...but both such qualities were difficult to find during a pitched battle.

Travis could not remember a time seeing the captain so simply disorganized by his own thoughts. Most of the crew seemed to consider it a mark of stress. They were part right, he suspected.

It was, the more he thought about it, an ingeniously laid plan. Danilov's resolve and that of his crew would be tested once again by despicable orders, and in the end they would probably carry them out, but guilt and regret accumulated like toxins inside people's souls, and eventually it would rot them to the core—unless they took some step to purge the poison and make themselves right again.

Travis was waiting for the moment. So were his superiors. Much more rested on this than the provincial minds of the _Charlemagne_'s crew could have ever known—and even though this spy thing still wasn't his calling, he had to admit, he couldn't wait.

—

**June 4th, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

"...and then I caught a _fish!_" exclaimed Lily Thevalley as she bounded around the walkways of Gigafloat, circling a tired and only semi-interested Emily von Oldendorf. The latter became significantly more interested when Lily solved the mystery of where that horrible fish smell had been coming from by pulling a two-foot-long swordfish wrapped in plastic out of a paper bag. "See? Look at this bastard! He's huge!"

"I-I see," Emily stuttered. "Does Stella know you caught that thing?"

"No," Lily said with a conspiratorial smile, "and we're gonna cook it before she ever finds out, right Em?"

That was certainly a tempting offer, and it would probably smell better that way too. "Go find Trojan, he knows how to cook fresh fish. I think."

"Trojan knows how to do everything! He's like a walking Swiss army knife." Lily dropped the fish back into her bag and stared down at its empty, wide eyes triumphantly. "But fishing is totally boring, just so you know. You have to sit there forever to wait for the fish to bite, and sometimes they just _don't_, and all you did was sit out there and get a sunburn for nothing."

Emily faded back to listening with half an ear as Lily went on about the outrage of watching a shark steal her first catch. She had promised Trojan she was going to try to relax while they were here, at least as much as they could with the knowledge in the backs of their minds that they would have to leave as soon as the repairs were done and get back to the war, but at least Gigafloat offered no shortage of things to do.

For example, there was avoiding the seemingly omnipresent hologram of George Glenn. Even after all this time, he was _still_ creepy.

There was also the mysterious blind preacher who was apparently the administrator of the platform. She had only seen him a few times, and felt through her Newtype abilities the preternatural aura of calm that radiated from him. Father Malchio was a different sort of human—and one that she supposed she would have to meet, sooner or later.

After all, he was a reverend, and reverends were said to represent God. And if there was anyone's advice Emily needed these days, it was God's.

—

The freight elevator stopped with a rattle, the doors swung open, and Meyrin Hawke held back a gasp.

They were magnificent. The sleek, rounded armor, the styles that called back to their predecessors, the look of modernity and power built into them...Gigafloat and the Junk Guild had outdone themselves. The _Minerva_'s new Gundams would make it a force to be feared once again.

"It's been a challenge obtaining the modern and expensive parts these machines need," Malchio said with a small shrug, "but I suppose no expense is too much if it will help end this war." He smiled wanly. "And I know you'll use this power for the right cause, Captain Hawke."

Abbey stepped forward, making no effort to hide that she was impressed. "Are these things complete?"

"Not yet," spoke up Lowe from the back of the elevator, grinning proudly, "but since you guys brought us those nuclear reactors and N-Jammer Cancellers, we can get started. Have to do some redesigning, run some tests, you know how it goes, but by the time the _Minerva_'s repairs are finished, you guys will have a bunch of new Gundams."

Meyrin smiled back. "Then we'll owe you quite a favor, Lowe."

"Oh, no," laughed Lowe, "I got to build a bunch of super cool Gundams. But," his grin turned a touch wicked, "as long as you're offering—"

"Not very gracious of you, Mr. Gear," Malchio chuckled, and as Lowe apparently surrendered, the reverend turned away, back towards the door. "I'm confident these machines will serve you well, Captain Hawke, but they will require adjustment." His smile faded. "And we will have to work quickly."

Meyrin turned her eyes towards the Gundams. As long as they ended this war...

—

_This is not how I recall leaving you last, Shinn_.

Shinn Asuka's eyes snapped up in surprise. He glanced around his room aboard the _Minerva_, then back down at the tablet with its vast compendium of information on his new Zulfiqar Gundam—and then he looked back up and blinked at the sight of Rey Za Burrel standing in front of the door of his bunk, arms crossed, looking quite disapproving.

"Well, shit happens," he said with a shrug.

_How are you going to defeat Kira Yamato if you're crippled with self-doubt and concern over your protégé?_ Rey's look did not falter. _You of all people should know that trials of character can only be dealt with by the character under trial_.

"I had to do that because I actually _was_ on my own," Shinn grumbled. "And no thanks to you, as I recall."

Rey arched an eyebrow. _Are you still angry about that?_

"No," Shinn said, "now I'm just...resigned." He looked back up at the ghostly vision, and for a moment, he contemplated pouring out his heart and soul to a hallucination. But if he was going mad, at least it had a method of making him feel better built in. "I feel like I should be...I dunno, guiding her more. Steering her out of this funk she's in." He waved a hand. "Ever since Argus attacked us in the Pacific, she's been on this slow downward spiral. Maybe even before that, I don't know. And now I feel like all I did was drag her out of a tolerable life and throw her into a miserable one." He shook his head. "Yeah, she would have wound up no better than an Extended, but I can't really say this is any better."

Rey's face did not change. _That is not for you to say._ Shinn blinked and looked back up. _She will decide her path herself. You have your own destiny to worry about._ He tilted his chin up imperiously. _And it is not served by sitting in here moping and pretending to read that manual._

Shinn was silent a moment, before he looked back up into those familiar old blue eyes and smirked. "Even from beyond the grave, you're still trying to mold me."

_It is only what you need._

—

Kazahana Aja bounded down the walkway and immediately enveloped Stella's legs in a hug. Stella smiled back and awkwardly patted the shorter girl's shoulders. Kazahana was nice, but she was so, so smart too. It was weird. Stella didn't think children her age could be that smart.

"I heard you were hurt in the fight at Banadiya," Kazahana said breathlessly. "Are you okay now?"

"Stella's fine—"

"Great!" Kazahana seized her hand and dragged her down the walkway, towards the ramp leading up to the bright yellow hull of the _ReHOME_. "Then let's go! I got a fish a couple months ago that I want to show you!"

Stella let Kazahana pull her up the ramp and into the _ReHOME_. The poor girl had exhausted all her knowledge and resources about the Extended, and either way, most of that information had gone to Shinn, because Stella certainly didn't understand it. All she knew was that she was different from ordinary people—but she had friends who were different too, so that was okay, because they could all be different together. Instead, Kazahana had turned her interests towards ocean life. She used a bunch of words Stella didn't quite understand, like "abyssal zone"—maybe it had something to do with Auel's Gundam—but at least it was someone who shared her fascination with the sea and the things that lived there.

She smiled and made sure to say hello to the _ReHOME_'s colorful crew. The cold and mechanical mercenary Gai, the cheerful if usually drunk Reed, the ever-put-upon Kisato, happy and brilliant Kazahana...even among the serious and unemotional ones, like Gai and Canard, Stella couldn't really say that they were sad or unhappy.

Stella had always heard that the _Minerva_ and its Gundam pilots were heroes to the rest of the Resistance. Maybe that was the price...in which case, Stella decided that she didn't want to be a hero.

—

"_You_ look like you need a _magic show!_"

Emily yelped in surprise and whipped around, wrench at the ready—only to find it go sailing through the holographic image of George Glenn. He blinked for a moment as his distorted face righted itself.

"Now that wasn't very nice," he added. "Would've blown my jawbone clear off if I had one! Good thing I don't, eh?"

Emily fell back from the apparition in front of the Eclipse's cockpit and slumped into the seat. "H-How do you keep _doing_ that?"

George merely pointed down towards the hangar floor, where an odd contraption with an antenna was set up at the foot of what would eventually be Athrun's Celestial Justice Gundam. "Kisato put a receptor down there so I can help. And help I am! But I'm also here, because there's nothing the First Coordinator can't do! Speaking of which...!" His hologram flickered for an instant and then George Glenn stood again, decked out in a long-tailed coat and top hat. "Humankind has never seen mystical arts of this sort before, but today, young Emily, you will be the first to witness the true powers of the great beyond! _Be amazed_ by the magical machinations and supernatural skills of the _Great and Powerful George Glenn!_"

Fireworks went off in the background and Emily stared in disbelief as George raised a saw in one hand, and a box with a grinning blonde woman inside materialized before him. "U-Um, I'm kinda busy—"

"Nonsense! Nobody is too busy for magic! Now, prepare your socks for a rocking as I saw my lovely assistant in two—"

"That's okay, really," Emily said. But before she could do anything more, George brought his saw down—and then it and his lovely assistant promptly burst into a rain of confetti and sparkles.

"See? Once again it is proven that _nothing_ is beyond the amazing, show-stopping abilities of _the_ _Great and Powerful George Glenn!_" Fireworks went off again and George held out his arms expectantly.

The applause and adulation never came, and the magical accessories promptly disappeared in place of George in his typical white Junk Guild outfit. He stared thoughtfully at Emily as she got back to work.

"Oh, I get it," he said. "You're _brooding_ about something. Jeez, you should've said so! Wasted my whole act."

"I-I'm sorry?"

"No, it's okay," George said with a wave. "Though might I inquire as to what it is about which you're brooding?"

Emily looked back down at the Eclipse's console. How would _he_ understand? Would he even take her seriously?

"Y'know," George added, "I always divide my problems up into the ones where I can do something about it, and the ones where I can't. It works pretty well. If you can do something about it, great, then do it. And if you can't—then who cares?" He shrugged. "Just somethin' to think about."

George Glenn vanished as Kisato started yelling at him far down below near the receptor, leaving Emily alone in the Eclipse with her thoughts.

—

**June 5th, CE 77 - Daedalus Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Magnificent.

That was the only word she could use to describe the vast assemblage of force that would soon be before her. The screens in Daedalus Crater's vast control room did not do justice to this great armada's power, its glory, and the justness of its cause.

The hard work of years could come to fruition here. Standing on Daedalus' command dais, Crayt Markav crossed her arms and smiled. Nearly two hundred and fifty warships, over twenty five hundred mobile suits, all led by the full might of the Phantom Pain's growing independent space fleet. And at its head would stand over a dozen mobile armors, and all of it would be led by five mighty Destroy Gundams. Justice was coming. ZAFT could not escape.

It had been infuriating to sit here as the war raged outside, waiting, preparing, quietly gathering a fleet and hatching a plan to destroy these blasphemous Coordinators once and for all. There stood a mockery to God's creation, the hand of the Devil himself reaching into the world to pluck, kill, and insult. She had nearly dispatched ships from Daedalus to go destroy that ZAFT task force that had attacked Copernicus, before Djibril stopped her.

But that long wait was coming to an end. God's justice would be served one way or another—and on the screen before her appeared the wire-grid image of the chariot that would carry her into that glorious battle. So they'd named it after some heathen god of creation and destruction. That made no difference. The Vishnu packed the firepower of a Destroy Gundam into a frame even smaller than a Euclid, and her hands already itched to take its controls and ride it out to war.

ZAFT was faltering. The Resistance was fading. A just and proper world was on the cusp of its first dawn. Crayt tightened her fists; she would be there.

—

**Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"It was my understanding," Gerhardt von Oldendorf intoned, "that this project had ceased five years ago."

Gerhardt stood on the observation deck over the maintenance pod where slept a man with fiery, catlike eyes tattooed on his forehead—or at least, that was what Gerhardt assumed those things were. At his side, longhaired, black-clad Major General Hans von Schadt merely shrugged.

"Things get lost in the great Alliance bureaucracy. Something I'm sure you understand, Director Oldendorf."

"That's not my point," Gerhardt answered. "The project was ended because their conditioning was too unreliable. They had a nasty habit of betraying us."

Schadt waved a dismissive hand. "He's different. Aside from the drugs and maintenance pod time, he has no reason to want to leave us, because we give him what he wants."

"Which is...?"

"A chance to kill, and a weapon with which to do it."

Gerhardt frowned. "Giving a Destroy Gundam to a Combat Coordinator is still an unwise move, Hans."

"Gerhardt, really, he'll be alright," Hans said with another wave. "You know, they found him in CE 71. ZAFT had built a giant Gundam of their own, but it was defeated in combat by the Junk Guild and Serpent Tail. We recovered Ash and gave him some," Schadt cleared his throat, "treatments, if you will. And now he's on our side."

"I thought you had assigned him the Testament."

"Oh, he outgrew _that,_" Schadt chuckled. "We pawned it off on Lieutenant Imelia for a reason, you know. And he outgrew the Euclids too, so there's really no higher on the ladder he can go." He smiled. "Unless Procurements has something up its sleeve that I should know about."

Gerhardt stared down at the slumbering man. The Combat Coordinators, the brainwashed superior humans who fought for the Alliance and did their bidding, but had a dangerous tendency to start thinking for themselves...they certainly sounded familiar.

"Well," he said at last, "perhaps one day he'll see action against the _Minerva_."

"The _Minerva_," scoffed Schadt. "I guarantee you, director, if he goes up against the _Minerva_, he will tear them apart."

"I'm sure he would," said Gerhardt.

—

**June 6th, CE 77 - Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

The door clicked shut and Grand Admiral MacIntyre let out his breath. Commanding a warship in the heat of battle was one thing, but facing the slavering jackals of the political class was something else entirely. At least all the enemy wanted to do to you on the battlefield was kill you.

He leaned heavily on his cane as he made his way out of the committee chamber. The representatives had come to Washington brimming with their constituents' anger at Lord Djibril's strategy for dealing with ZAFT, and he couldn't rightly say he blamed them. Djibril's strategy made sense, assuming that Messiah's beam shield could deflect even the Requiem's blasts, but it made for a frustrated public and perilous politics.

But the politics were Meyers' job.

MacIntyre held back a sigh as he found a convenient elevator. His energy had begun to leave him these days, and his job as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made him feel every one of his seventy-nine years. He was supposed to have retired four years ago, but the wars with ZAFT and the Resistance had put that on hold and prompted a waiver for the otherwise mandatory retirement age. His hand over the Navy, and indeed the whole of the Atlantic Federation's armed forces, would be hard to replace.

He knew that. He also knew that he was treading on uncertain ground. What he had his hands in now went against every oath he had sworn in his career. But that hadn't stopped other men, with intentions worse than his own, from taking advantage of the system's flaws to turn the world towards madness. If Meyers could offer him an avenue for setting the world right and God would give him a little more time on this earth, he would take it. Just enough to put things back the way they were supposed to be. That was all he asked.

He thought back to Alison. She had been so young at everything—including her death. It had been so meaningless—all for one of the Atlantic Federation's many crimes against humanity in the course of this disaster of a war. He was still here, even as an old man who had watched the world change around him and didn't understand why or how. All he had known was the fleet, but now the fleet was turned towards evil ends.

The elevator reached the parking garage with a thump and MacIntyre made his way towards his vehicle to return to the Pentagon. He had a very busy day ahead of him, and it was more than the men and women of the armed forces counting on him.

—

**June 7th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

Rau Le Creuset cocked an eyebrow in surprise as he felt Emily finally emerge onto the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck. The view was hardly spectacular—just the inside of the dry-dock where Gigafloat's technicians feverishly worked on the repairs—but it was quiet and they would be alone. And he had questions that sorely required answers.

"I understand that 'Zero-Two' character is causing you some grief," he said after the door had slid shut.

Emily came to a stop against the railing and stared out down the _Minerva_'s sloping prow. "She's my mother," she said at last. "I'm not supposed to be fighting my mother."

"But you aren't," Rau pointed out. "It's only a clone."

"That's not what it feels like." She clenched her fists around the railing. "It felt like her. And it felt like..." She trailed off.

"Felt like what?"

"Like I could save her."

Something sparked to life in the back of Rau's mind. "Save her," he echoed. "And she didn't feel like an Extended, so it might well be possible..."

Emily blinked. "Wha—you mean I _could_ do it?"

"It's likelier that you couldn't, to be honest. You would have to defeat her first, and if you have so much trouble fighting the apparition of your mother, that in itself will be a challenge. Not to mention disabling her machine without killing her." He shrugged. "But you _do_ have a way of defying the odds..."

Emily went silent and Rau held back a triumphant smile. It was cruelty beyond words for ZAFT to choose a soldier they knew would inflict this emotional torture on her. It would be cruelty beyond comprehension to make her destroy it. Only a world too far gone in its own madness and lust for power and prestige would make such a thing happen. And that was a world that needed to be punished.

"You really think I can save her?" Emily asked.

Rau smiled back. "Of course you can."

—

"So," said Meyrin Hawke, hands folded over her desk in the _Minerva_'s captain's office, "he was your commander. Tell me about him."

On the other side of the desk, Athrun Zala squirmed as he searched for words to describe the enigma of Rau Le Creuset. At least she was asking...

"I remember it being made out to be an honor to serve under him," he said, "and the air of omniscience and ease with which he fought the Alliance was pretty impressive. Why do you ask?"

"The ship's doctor says he's a clone, with a deteriorating body." She tapped her fingers on the desk. "And Shinn says, among other things, he worked behind the scenes to carry out the Junius 7 drop."

"Yes, he did."

"On the other hand, he provides us with valuable strategic insight, he's developed a number of tactical maneuvers that have helped us win battles, and his experience and combat skills make him a valuable part of the ship's team. So it's not like we can just kill him or dump him off somewhere or something either."

Athrun blinked and wondered if Shinn had finally brought her around. "I suppose..."

"So I want to know what it is you think he's doing now that's so bad we have to get rid of him," Meyrin said.

Athrun sat back. "I'll have to tell you a story that you might not believe."

"I'm listening."

"Then it goes like this." He leaned forward, took a moment to choose his words, and took another to push down the painful memories that came with this little tale. "You said he's a defective clone with shortened telomeres. That's true. It means that his time on this earth is limited, but his ambitions are not—which means he needs someone under his confidence, to carry on his plans if he can't do it himself. An apprentice, if you will, and one who's not living on borrowed time. He had one before. It was Kira Yamato."

Meyrin blanched. "Your old friend?"

"Why else did you think the Alliance's Strike Gundam pilot and the guy who stole the Freedom Gundam eventually joined ZAFT?" He shrugged sadly. "I was there. Rau's sleight of hand and mistakes on the battlefield added up to all of Kira's stress over the war, he snapped, and he went with the first person who offered him comfort and purpose—and that was Rau."

"Then what's he doing here?"

Athrun bowed his head. "That's what I'm not sure of. Obviously, he's not in a position to control Kira anymore, so either someone else is, or worse, Kira is doing this all of his own free will. But either way, Rau is still a defective clone with a short lifespan, so he still needs someone to carry on his work. And," he swallowed anxiously, "he's been hanging out a lot with Emily."

Silence descended over them both for a moment as Meyrin seemed to ponder the implications. "So what _is_ his plan, anyway?"

"I don't know."

Meyrin leaned forward and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Then we'll have to find out."

—

**June 8th, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

The Marduk Gundam towered over them all and Auel Neider had to admit, it did look pretty cool. It still had the same shape as the old Abyss, but it had obvious changes, like swiveling beam cannons mounted in the knees and a heavily redesigned pair of shoulder shells. And at the moment, Kisato Yamabuki was pointing out the most important new feature in them: the opening on the tip of each shell, flanked on either side by folding metal flaps.

"So the Abyss was good for shooting lots of beams," Kisato explained, "and the Marduk is even better. Those guns on the tips of the shoulder shells are the 'Callidus Mk II' cannons. They have adjustable output, so you can either fire a tightly-focused beam with a dense particle concentration, or a wider-angle beam with less power but more area coverage." She pointed at the flat panels mounted on the sides of the shells. "And those are parts for the Geschmeidig Panzer armor. You have _no_ idea how hard that was to get."

Auel blinked. "Geschmeidig Panzer? You mean I can redirect beam blasts back at the fuckers who fired them?"

"U-Um, yeah—"

"_Awesome!_"

Kisato took a moment to recover. "Um, so, there you have it. The Marduk. Optimized for defense and heavy firepower. Any questions?"

"Just one," Auel said. "When's the test drive?"

At that, Kisato's nervous smile vanished and she stared down at her tablet. "Not for a while," she said. "The internal structure needs to be modified to accept the Abyss's N-Jammer Canceller and reactor." She cast an annoyed glare up at the gantry in front of the silent Gundam Eclipse, where Lowe Gear was eagerly interrogating Emily about technical aspects of the Gundam she had no hope of understanding. "_He_ was supposed to get down here and help us out with that, but you know how Lowe is."

Auel frowned. "What, is her Gundam more important than mine? Fuck that! Mine has more guns, that makes it more important."

"Wait, Auel, where are you—" Kisato started after him, as he stomped over towards the ladder to go track down Lowe.

—

The downside of any lengthy stay in port was unimaginable unassailable _boredom_. It was so bad it had led Roxy Bannon to the _Minerva_'s computer room, where desperation was setting in. Malchio wouldn't let anyone bring alcohol aboard Gigafloat, for a whole variety of reasons, so her supply of booze back in her cabin and whatever else anyone on the platform had smuggled aboard was the only intoxicating stuff to be found, so drinking the boredom away wasn't a viable option. After all, her precious cache of alcohol could not be allowed to go _dry_ or something.

So, as desperation set in, she found herself browsing personnel files in the ship's computer. She hadn't known Shinn was a Virgo. And on a whim, she decided to look up Meyrin's file.

She blinked at the birth date. June 12th, CE 57. She looked at the current date. June 8th, CE 77. The gears began to turn.

The angst around the ship had gotten almost suffocating in recent weeks. Ever since Carpentaria, life had been on a generally downward spiral for the long-suffering crew of the _Minerva_. Athrun and Viveka finally hooking up was probably the only bright spot in an otherwise ceaseless parade of defeats and setbacks and narrow escapes. And there was something in the very near future worth celebrating, or at least good enough to serve as a pretext for having fun.

Roxy grinned. She had work to do.

—

**June 9th, CE 77 - **_**Izumo**_**-class battleship **_**Amaterasu**_**, Arzachel Crater lunar base, the Moon**

As a small expenditure of its otherwise infinite generosity, the Earth Alliance Space Force had charitably donated a grand total of ten warships to the reduced and humbled Orb Space Fleet. An _Agamemnon_-class carrier, three _Nelson_-class battleships, and six _Drake_-class destroyers, all refit to carry mobile suits, sat in the dock as they were loaded with the black, orange, and white Windams of the Orb Security Force. Adding that to the Orb Space Fleet's seven _Izumo_-class battleships, Jona expected to have seventeen ships and nearly three hundred and fifty mobile suits with which to attack _Ame-no-Mihashira_.

It would be _such_ a waste.

He figured this day would have come eventually, although it was much sooner than he'd expected. And in truth, he didn't really mind the opportunity to exterminate Rondo Mina Sahaku once and for all. It would have to be done eventually as well. But the manner in which it would be done—as a token of submission to Lord Djibril, a move to placate the increasingly harried Earth Alliance President—_that_ was what infuriated him.

But there was nothing he could do about it now, so all that was left was to plan out his little raid. At least some good would come of this. No doubt Sahaku was waiting on _Ame-no-Mihashira_ for the winds to shift before making a move—but she was so ensconced and so hidden that he could only guess what she was planning.

The cargo elevator came to a stop with a rumble and Jona glanced furtively among his well-armed retinue at Mara Saraba, still in her black Phantom Pain uniform. After all, appearances had to be kept up. The heavy doors slid open and light flooded the chamber.

Jona stepped forward and gestured upwards dramatically. "I've always been a firm believer in second chances," he said. "I even extend that conviction to mobile suits."

At his side, Mara cocked an eyebrow. "Took long enough, didn't it."

"Well, the Akatsuki _was_ in a pretty bad state," Jona said with a shrug. "And we did have to modify the _Shiranui_ pack for use by a non-Newtype. But still," he smirked, "it should get the job done."

Mara scowled. "A shame the _Minerva_ won't be there. Second chances include rematches, y'know."

"Oh, it's just as well," Jona said with a wave of his hand. "After all, we wouldn't want them interfering."

He looked back up at the Akatsuki's gleaming face. Second chances. He was starting to run low on those.

—

**June 10th, CE 77 - Lagrange Point 5**

The great sweep of the third ship of the _Gondwana_ class of immense carriers dominated the view from the _Silverwind_ shuttle that Valentine Sunogachi called her own. The wonders of Mirage Colloid had hidden a veritable shipyard throughout the shoal zones of Lagrange Point 5. When the time came to unleash her fleet, crewed as it was with loyal underlings culled from the colonies of Mars, the Alliance would have no idea what to do. They thought they were destroying ZAFT's fleet, bit by bit, as it scurried around the Earth Sphere causing mayhem. In a way, they were right—but not right enough.

The _Rodinia_ would be completed in a matter of days and it would make a fine addition to her fleet. They would defend the ZAKU Goliath as it made its way to Earth, and then fan out to launch a war that would make their present activities look like child's play. There would be nothing left in space by the time they were done. The Coordinators would claim dominion over the whole of space, an infinite area over which their people could grow. Let the Naturals rot in the species' cradle. The Coordinators had destiny before them. Lord Djibril had nearly stolen it with his Requiem, but they would rise again and take back the sky.

Valentine closed her eyes and drank in the fading embers of hatred as Messiah receded and the construction crews surrounding the vast hull of the _Rodinia_ approached. Hatred smoldered under the edges among these men, but here the dominant emotion was urgency. They had a flagship to finish and a war to join.

It was almost better this way, she thought. The Coordinators needed a jolt to make them realize what they had to do. And yet now, what Djibril had thought was a deathblow would become the opening note of their triumphant return.

Her thoughts turned back to the Coordinators' symbolic leader, the hero they all admired, Kira Yamato, and his poor, fragile little heart. He hid it well from his troops, but ferreting out the truth of his feelings was no difficult matter for Valentine and her dexterous Newtype senses. He had reached that stage where he looked in the mirror and could no longer recognize himself. Fidelity—to herself and to her vision—had become his mantra. When this war was over, she wondered if there would be anything left within him.

But it didn't matter if there was or not. The new era of Coordinators evolving into Newtypes would rejuvenate him. He would see that the sacrifices had been worth it. And the world would belong to them.

—

**June 11th, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

The early morning hours were quiet on Gigafloat, and it was the main reason why Emily saw fit to get up before the sun. This way she could get work done, or even just sit and think. And with the Eclipse running in fine form and no particular expertise for working with the ship's repairs or other people's Gundams, she had little else to do at that hour in the morning.

So, Emily found herself on an observation deck, staring out at the horizon, where the first glimmering rays of the sun were already cresting over the darkness. Soon it would be loud and busy and someone would probably hunt her down for something, but for now, it was quiet, peaceful—

...and not alone.

At the feeling of a calm presence and the sound of a tapping cane, Emily turned in surprise to find the Reverend Malchio shuffling onto the deck. "F-Father Malchio," she started, "I didn't know—"

"No need," Malchio said, and waved her off, before making his way up to the railing to stand next to her, facing out to sea and the cool breeze of the ocean washing over them both. "I take it you're an early bird as well?"

Emily squirmed. "Something like that."

Malchio nodded. "It's a good time of day. Quiet enough to be alone with your thoughts." He patted his chest. "The Lord is always with me, but His children have a way of demanding my attention."

"I-I see." She stared at him curiously and wondered where that calming, confident aura of his came from. There was no pressure, he wasn't a Newtype, but in his presence she felt her fears about Zero-Two fading away.

"I must confess," Malchio went on, "that I suspect the Lord's hand is at work here. I've heard a great deal about you, Miss Oldendorf, you and your frightening moniker." His smile faded. "And your recent troubles."

Emily blinked. "Who told you that?"

"It's not a priest's place to betray the trust of those who come to him in confessional. But," he shrugged, "nor is it the place of a man of God to hear the cries of one who needs help and pass them by." He reached out with his empty hand and put it comfortingly on Emily's shoulder, and her tension began to melt. "Especially for one as important as you."

"I didn't want to be important," Emily said.

"And I didn't want to be blind. Yet I am blind and you are important nevertheless. We are given our fates and we must endure the hardships that come with them. But," he paused and gestured out towards the sea, "there is something else for us as well. Fate is what we are given. But destiny...that is what we are _offered_."

She followed his gesture out to sea, but he seemed to understand what her silence really meant.

"I have my fate," he said. "My fate is that of a person who cannot see. I must carry this cane, I must rearrange the mundane details of life that the sighted so often take for granted, and I must ask others to do the same to accommodate me. For years all I could do was tend to an orphanage in the Marshall Islands and wait for the Lord to speak to me. And I cannot regain my sight. But is that my destiny?

"My destiny is so much more, for God would not mean for me to be a blind old man on a forgotten island. God has a greater purpose for me, and for all of us; it is up to us to decide if we will live up to what He offers. He offered me the chance to help others on a scale far greater than my orphanage made possible. He has offered me the confidence of powerful political leaders and the opportunity to administer as important a facility as this platform. I can even lend my hand and my power to the cause of freeing the oppressed and rescuing a people from destruction. Even if that requires violence, is that still not better than my fate?"

Emily hung her head. "I guess."

"And you have your fate," Malchio continued. "We both know what it is. But what is your _destiny?_"

Rau's words flickered back into her head.

"Your destiny is up to you," Malchio said. "But it's the same for everyone." He put a hand on her shoulder again. "You've had to fight this clone of your mother, I'm told, a clone that makes you feel like your fate no longer matters, like you aren't the Angel of Death that the Alliance and ZAFT alike so fear. But this clone isn't your mother, and you know _that_ as well. So think, if you will, about her position. In relation to her, what is your fate—and what is your destiny?"

Emily closed her eyes and leaned against the railing as Malchio returned his attention to the sea, and the warming sun began to ascend.

—

To be continued...


	34. Phase 34: Dreams

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 34 - Dreams

—

**June 12th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

Meyrin Hawke had learned to expect a lot of things over the course of her tenure as the _Minerva_'s captain. Traps, ambushes, adulation, microwave ramen for dinner every day for weeks on end, those were all par for the course. But at no point in her three years as the ship's commanding officer did a birthday party cross her mind.

It was Roxy's fault, technically. Meyrin's seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth birthdays had all been spent in some kind of combat operation—like the one in the L5 shoal zone where they'd almost crashed the ship into a piece of debris—but this time, when June 12th had dawned, the _Minerva_ had finally been at rest. And Roxy _had_ been keeping that prodigious liquor cabinet of hers well stocked in anticipation of a "special occasion" that had finally come to pass.

And best of all, at least in Roxy's opinion, Meyrin was twenty years old now, which made her legally able to drink in some countries. And if it counted in some countries, then by God it counted in _all_ countries.

All of this combined to explain why Meyrin was standing in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge with a glass of merlot in hand and a pleasant buzz beginning to kick in around the edges of her mind. Of course, if the captain couldn't cry or falter in front of her crew, she _certainly_ couldn't get herself trashed at a party and spend the next day hung over, so Roxy's challenge to try to tackle that terrifying bottle of absinthe would have to go unanswered.

Or, she noted wryly, she'd just have to talk Sting or Auel into doing it—which had evidently been her plan B, because Auel was passed out on one of the seats, with the absinthe bottle by his feet.

"So," Roxy exclaimed, as she wheeled in out of nowhere and threw an arm around Meyrin's shoulders, "how's the birthday girl doing?"

Meyrin smiled back. "Nice and buzzed. Thanks for doing this, by the way. I, well," she shrugged, "kind of forgot it was my birthday."

"Yeah, see, that's the problem with the rest of ya fuckers," Roxy answered, and Meyrin decided to ignore the overpowering smell of some expensive European beer on her breath. "Too much fuckin' angst. You guys gotta cut loose more often."

"Duly noted, Miss Bannon," Meyrin said, and raised her glass. Roxy swung up a half-empty bottle of something Meyrin couldn't pronounce, the glass clinked together, and a moment later the red-haired girl tipped the bottle back and expertly drained it. Meyrin cringed at the sight. "Though I do wonder how you can drink like that and not be hung over."

"Mystical arts from the Far East," Roxy replied with a smirk. "Can't tell you, it would explode your little Western mind. Anyway, I need to go convince Abbey to give up the Baileys so I can start the blow jobs."

"The _what?_"

"Cocktails, you pervert. Later!"

Meyrin watched Roxy melt back into the crowd of the ship's increasingly drunk crew and then immediately swallowed the rest of her wine. Alcohol would clean away that horrible, horrible mental image. Alcohol was a cleanser. It would do the trick.

Besides, she had to admit, it did feel good to just shut up and have some fun. There was really nothing else to do, with Gigafloat's technicians handling the ship's repairs and no particularly pressing needs for the _Minerva_ or her few operational mobile suits. So surely nobody would complain if she took a little time off. It was her birthday, after all. It was time to cut loose.

"Wait a minute," she started, as something occurred to her, "did she say _Abbey?_"

—

"You're not supposed to be drinking that," Emily said.

It was lame and it wasn't going to stop her and they both knew it, because Lily looked Emily in the eye, cracked a mile-wide grin, and then tipped back the shot glass and emptied it. Trojan reached forward with an annoyed look, but Emily stopped him. Karma would kick in—and it did, as Lily immediately started coughing and sputtering.

"Plus," Emily added, "you're underage."

"Sh-shut up!" Lily spluttered. "It _burns!_" She wiped her mouth angrily. "Besides, how come _you_ guys get to drink? You're underage too!"

"No we're not," Trojan said, and lifted his own bottle by way of emphasis. "What happens on international waters stays on international waters."

"Then how come _I_ can't drink?"

"Because the powers that be say you can't," Emily said. Lily pouted, turned on her heel, and stomped off.

Trojan shook his head. "You know she's gonna just go drink something else," he said.

Emily shrugged. "If the burning on the way down doesn't stop her, the hangover the next morning will teach her." She looked around, trying to put out of her mind the strange and growing feeling of lust coming from her sister, because that was wrong in so many ways. "I had no idea Roxy had this much alcohol in her cabin."

"Well," Trojan said awkwardly, "it's not all hers. Lowe contributed some, and so did Reed from Serpent Tail, and I, well..."

"Well what?"

"I _may_ have helped Roxy shanghai somebody's stash that they'd hidden in one of the holding bays."

Emily blinked. "You _stole_ it?"

"_Stole_ is such a loaded word," Trojan went on with a nervous smile. "I prefer the term...um, _appropriated._" Emily did not appear to be buying it. "Really, it was just sitting there. Nobody was doing anything with it. Now they are. It was the right thing to do for the booze."

That did not appear to work either, but Emily merely shrugged her shoulders and turned back towards the crowd and its tipsy aura. "Don't expect me to save you if someone finds out."

"We brought their booze to a better place. It's happier here."

"If you say so."

—

Medication was a bitch.

Rau Le Creuset was not normally given to such language, but that was about the best word he could think of to describe his annoyance towards the pills that slowed down the effects of his chromosomal degeneration. Alcohol dimmed its effects, which meant the vast assortment of spirits that Roxy Bannon had somehow conjured would have to pass him by untouched. This was a real shame, because she had a bottle of scotch in there that was almost as old as he was.

Instead, the masked man stood at the edge of the party with a glass of club soda in hand, in hopes of warding off anybody who thought he should have a drink and the attendant awkward explanation of why he couldn't. Of course, Rau Le Creuset was no stranger to alcohol-lubricated parties like this, and it didn't hurt that it had lifted the oppressive air of doom that had until now been suffocating the _Minerva_'s crew. It was one thing to plunge Emily into an endless pit of despair; everyone else didn't have to go with her.

He reached out with his senses and found Emily somewhere on the other side of the room with that boy of hers. Idly, he contemplated talking to her again and finding out what she had been doing with the Reverend Malchio, but it probably wasn't worth it. He could wheedle it out of her at some other time, when there wouldn't be at least two other Newtypes milling about to interrupt them.

He glanced off to the side. Well, _one_ other Newtype. The other one would soon be indisposed.

And so Rau sat back and watched as the party went on and a very intoxicated Sting staggered up onto the table and declared himself the "pillow pope," whatever that meant. Let them have their fun. The work could begin again later.

—

Nobody noticed, Athrun hoped, as he and Viveka slipped out one of the side doors and beat a hasty retreat down the hallway from the crew lounge. He also certainly hoped that nobody—least of all Viveka—noticed his trembling hands and the incredible nervousness no doubt tinting his aura for anyone with Newtype senses to see for themselves.

No such luck. Viveka cocked an eyebrow at him. "I don't bite, y'know." She paused and cracked a devilish grin. "Or are you into that?"

"N-No..."

"Wouldn't have surprised me." She blinked. "My bunk or yours?"

"Which one's further away?"

"Mine."

Athrun cringed and decided to hope that it wouldn't occur to Emily to go back to her cabin for the next few hours. Viveka didn't appear to care, because instead she pressed a kiss to his lips and pulled him down the corridor.

—

If Shinn's senses were correct, then the party was beginning to wind down, as the booze took hold, everyone got sleepy, and the night wore on. He had little experience with this sort of thing, but being a Newtype had to count for something. Surely, if nothing else, it could give him a preternatural sense of the direction of a party. As long as Newtypes couldn't get drunk from other people's drunkenness, anyways.

He cringed as he sensed Athrun's presence spike somewhere on the ship, and remembered that drunkenness was not the only part of a Newtype's capacity that would be tested tonight.

Shinn put that thought out of his mind as forcefully as he could and instead honed in on Meyrin's presence, where she'd taken up station to watch from a safe distance as Lowe Gear's capacity for alcohol consumption was roundly outmatched by the superhuman liver of Reed Wheeler. Lowe was going to regret that tomorrow. But Reed's next challenger was Roxy, and _that_ would be a bout to see.

"Getting away before Lowe breaks anything, are you?" Meyrin asked with a smile.

Shinn smiled back and listed his glass for a quiet toast. "Happy birthday, captain."

"I really wasn't expecting all this," Meyrin went on with a wave of her hand. "I'd honestly forgotten it was my birthday. We were always busy for the last ones." She smiled sheepishly. "But Malchio will be upset."

"What Malchio doesn't know won't hurt him."

"I suppose." She paused for a moment to take in the vast sweep of her crew, and Shinn had to admit that it was good to feel everybody _else_ feeling good for once. It had been a while since it had been that way aboard the _Minerva_.

And it had been a while since it had been that way for _Meyrin_, too.

"Well," Shinn said, "if anyone deserves a party in her honor, it's you," he stepped back to offer a melodramatic bow, "_mon capitaine._"

Meyrin arched an eyebrow. "You still can't speak French."

"Never said I could."

She smiled back. "Well, that's good enough." She turned at the sound of a cheer, as Roxy stepped up to the table to challenge Reed for the title of most able to hold their liquor. "Oh, this looks like a disaster in the making—"

"No no," Shinn said, "it's gonna be good. Let's watch."

Meyrin paused to consider that, and then leaned back against the wall with Shinn to watch the festivities. And Shinn had to admit, for once, there was nothing but peace.

—

**June 13th, CE 77 - Socotra Naval Installation, Yemen**

"I'm afraid your request will have to be denied, captain," said Admiral MacIntyre with finality. "Admiral Krane has insisted, Djibril himself interceded to ensure that you would be part of this mission. There's no way out of it. They want you at Gigafloat."

In Admiral MacIntyre's uncomfortably small office, Danilov did his best to hide his emotions. MacIntyre arched an eyebrow, and Danilov guessed that his best had not been good enough. "I understand, sir."

"Although I must also add that this is the first time you've requested reassignment since taking command of the _Charlemagne_," MacIntyre went on. "And judging by your reasons for the request...I think I know what kind of man you are now, captain."

Danilov's mind darted back to their conversation on Athens. "Admiral..."

"So in that spirit, I think it would be wise to entrust you with a particular bit of information." He sat back. "Lord Djibril's strategy for dealing with ZAFT is working. Their fleet is being whittled away, piece by piece. But it's deeply unpopular with the public. They don't understand the military necessities that forced this choice, so as long as people keep dying or losing money in ZAFT's attacks. President Vasserot of the Atlantic Federation supports Djibril's policy wholeheartedly, and it's cost him so much support that he can't even get a nominee for Vice President through the Congress. So he doesn't have much time left in his political life." MacIntyre cocked an eyebrow. "And I'm sure you know what that means."

Danilov blinked. "He's going to be removed?"

"He and the Speaker, his political ally. That would make Senator Meyers the President, and he and Premier Musashihara intend to open negotiations with ZAFT to put them off guard for a decisive final strike," the admiral leaned forward, "and to withdraw from the Earth Alliance."

"W-withdraw from the Alliance?" Danilov sputtered. "But that would mean—"

"Civil war, yes. And we all know who the Phantom Pain would side with. But what I want to know, Captain Danilov, is who _you_ would side with."

Danilov searched for words. "I...is there some way to stop this?"

"If there is, I don't know it. I'm not a politician, I just have to listen to them." The admiral tapped his cane pointedly. "You don't have to decide right now, Danilov, but you had better not take too long. With Gigafloat and _Ame-no-Mihashira_ gone, the only thing left for the Resistance will be Terminal. And once that's gone, the Resistance won't be a factor anymore. And," he waved a hand, "do you really trust the politicians to set the Alliance right?"

—

Sven Cal Bayan looked horrible.

And that was putting it mildly. Even Mudie had to admit that the man looked like he needed about five more hours of sleep than he appeared to be getting each night, and as she and Shams watched him amble towards the mess hall's coffee machine, the most haunting thing about him was that look of utter despair swirling in his eyes.

Of course, she had her memories of him from training, the brutal, punishing training to which the earliest Phantom Pain recruits had been subjected. Her memories of him in the very beginning were dim, but for some reason, the idea of the stars and outer space kept occurring. He had been quiet and reclusive anyways, but maybe he had a hobby or something, before the Phantom Pain drilled it out of him.

Shams decided not to opt for subtlety. Shams never opted for subtlety. He marched right over and plopped himself down on the seat opposite from Sven, much to the silver-haired man's annoyance.

"So!" he said cheerfully. "I hear you've been hanging out with Yukiko a lot. What's up with that?"

"It's none of your concern," Sven said.

"It's our concern if our squadron commander goes insane," Mudie spoke up, to Sven and Shams' surprise. She wasn't _that_ worried that Sven was losing his mind, but needling him about it would probably be fun.

"I am not going insane," Sven shot back.

"Then what's this I hear about a 'Psyco System?'" Shams replied, and Sven fell silent in disbelief. "Yeah, I've heard of it. That thing they installed on the Diablo four years ago. It was supposed to let the pilot interface directly with the mobile suit. Only an Extended could handle it. What are you doing with it?"

Sven promptly stood up with a scowl on his lips. "_That_ is not your concern _either,_" he snapped, and swept out of the room with a growl. Mudie blinked in surprise and turned towards Shams.

"Is he seriously using the Psyco System?"

Shams put his head in his hands. "That's what I heard. And y'know something else about the Psyco System? It has to be used in moderation or it will in fact drive you insane." He waved a hand at the door through which Sven had just stormed. "And when does _he_ ever do something in moderation?"

Silence descended over them both for a moment. "So," Mudie said, "I suppose that means we should go apply for a transfer."

"I suppose so."

—

After eight nonstop hours of study and memorization of Gigafloat schematics, Grey Saiba was well and truly sick of maritime architecture. It didn't help that the wire-grid models all just started looking the same after the first twenty minutes, so when the lieutenant in charge of the briefing yelled at him for mistaking Block 23A's third connecting spar with Block 26B's exposed power conduit, it took everything he had not to yell back. That sort of thing never ended well for him.

Now that he could navigate Gigafloat's insides to the briefing officer's satisfaction, he was slumped against the railing on a deck overlooking the _Charlemagne_ in port. Hopefully Merau would be done soon so they could go get dinner.

The door over his shoulder opened and instead of Merau, it was Erin who came stomping out with a look of disgust on her face. She stopped short as she caught sight of Grey and tried to smooth herself over, but not before Grey caught the look in her eye.

"He was tough on you too?"

Erin threw her hands up in frustration. "They all look the same! What does it matter to us anyway? All we're gonna do is smash it."

Breaking Gigafloat apart would be a challenge, since an attack in CE 71 by Orb had prompted its proprietors to include stronger armoring along the underside, to protect the vulnerable connections between the blocks. So the Alliance would just have to slaughter its way through the platform's defenders and smash the thing from above, the hard way.

That wouldn't be fun.

"You did notice what's on some of those blocks, though, right?" he asked nervously. "A hospital? A refugee camp? An orphanage?"

Erin shifted uncomfortably. "Well, yes."

"And you're okay with this, even though they'll be in the line of fire?"

"Well the Resistance probably put them there as shields," she shot back. "They do that, y'know. And then hope that we won't shoot at them."

Grey stared at her skeptically and then turned back towards Volgograd. "If that's their plan, it sucks," he said, "'cuz we're gonna shoot at them anyway."

—

**June 14th, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

The Reverend Malchio sat in silent patience at the end of the conference table, and Meyrin had to admit that it was a bit unnerving to see him here. A council of war was the last place for a man such as him.

At the other end, the Professor put her hands back behind her head and comfortably propped her feet up on the table. "The short version," she began, "is that the war is all but over for the Resistance. Chiao Xu is dead, Copland and Terminal are on the run, the Resistance fleet is in retreat in all sectors, and all we've got left on Earth is Gigafloat."

Meyrin frowned. She hated to bring up this subject, but as long as it was there... "What about _Ame-no-Mihashira?_"

"That will not be an option," Malchio spoke up. "Intelligence from the Moon came in yesterday. They noticed the Orb Space Fleet leaving with Governor-General Seiran's ship in the lead, and their trajectory seemed to take them to _Ame-no-Mihashira_. It would appear the Alliance has finally decided to move against Lady Sahaku."

If Meyrin hated to broach that subject, then _this_ one was even worse. "Are we going to offer her any help?"

The Professor merely laughed. "You aren't going anywhere for the next couple days, sweetie. Not with the engine overhaul and the new Gundams still being tuned."

"Then we're going to leave Sahaku on her own?"

Malchio sighed. "The Resistance in space will have to assist her," he said. "We cannot."

"It's not all that bad anyway," the Professor added with a shrug. "I mean, don't tell me you two ever actually _trusted_ Sahaku."

"Many innocent people will die in the battle," Malchio answered. He looked back towards Meyrin. "But we do not have the resources to assist her in any event."

"Then, what do we do from here?" Meyrin asked.

The Professor arched an eyebrow towards Malchio, and the blind man leaned forward on his cane. "When your repairs are complete, we will send you to space," he said. "There is nothing more for you to do on Earth. But ZAFT's main fleet and its fortress are in space. That is where this war will be decided. And that is where you have to be."

"What about Gigafloat?" Meyrin started, but Malchio shook his head.

"Six years ago, I sent another group to space to end a war that had gone out of control. It worked for a time, but a second, even worse war started, and they averted disaster again, at the cost of their lives. And now, here is the third war, the one that may well destroy us all. But you can stop that—and you must." He tapped his cane on the floor. "Gigafloat will give you the means to end this war and send you to where it will be decided. But you must take up the mantle and stop this conflict before it consumes everything." He bowed his head. "I know I ask much of you, Captain Hawke. I asked much of Lacus Clyne as well. But after the Requiem and Copernicus, it's clear that this war as well will go out of control if no one stops it." He turned his head back up towards Meyrin. "And that power will have to rest with you."

Meyrin cringed—at the responsibility, at the power, at the thought of being compared to Lacus Clyne and all that that meant. But she had watched the Requiem blast her home out of the sky, and she had seen the dead pile up at Copernicus. Malchio was right. The _Minerva_ had spent three years as the symbol of justice for the Resistance. Only her ship—and only her crew—could do this.

She nodded. "I understand, father."

—

Dr. Freeman, as it turned out, was a man of few words and it had been his energetic assistant who had done most of the explaining. It had occurred to Auel Neider to ask where the hell this guy had gotten his reputation as a fierce killer of Alliance infantry, but the way he handled that crowbar in merely opening up a crate of spare batteries had put all doubts to rest. Auel Neider could respect a man who could use hardware store products to kill people with such dexterity.

That was all secondary, however, as Sting and Auel very nearly bounced out of the weapons lab, giddy with joy. Sting was particularly pleased with the new Fujin Gundam's four gunbarrels and enhanced atmospheric flight capability, and the inner gun fetishist in Auel's heart veritably sang at the sight of all those beam cannons on his new Marduk tearing apart a simulated squadron of Jet Windams.

Trojan and Lily, however, tramped behind them in a collective foul mood. Neither of them had scored any equipment upgrades, although Lowe Gear had enthusiastically promised to cobble _something_ together for them.

"So we're going to space next," Sting said with a wistful sigh. "Man, that's gonna be great. Test out the gunbarrels in zero gravity. That's where they work best, y'know."

"Jesus, I'm just glad to be getting the chance to _do something,_" Auel groaned. "Do you have any idea how long we've been cooped up on the _Minerva?_ And getting back in the saddle with a Gundam too! Good times are ahead of us, my friend. Good times."

Lily looked as though she decidedly disagreed with Auel's assessment of their futures, at least until she had a new mobile suit of her own. It wasn't fair, she said, she worked hard too.

But for his part, while Trojan was starting to see the strain that constant combat was putting on his poor DOM Trooper, he couldn't help but feel that even with a new mobile suit, the future would be anything but bright. Not with the war coming to its end.

And as these things tended to go, when wars ended, they ended with a bang.

—

The sounds of the dock at work were muffled as the observation deck door slid shut, and with a heavy sigh, Nathaniel Hatias glanced over his shoulder at the new arrival. Alec Ladd still seemed out of place among these Resistance fighters and refugees. The brawny ZAFT soldier stared down awkwardly at the mighty _Aristotle_, safe in its dry-dock—for now.

"Did you talk to them about supplies?" he asked.

Nathaniel shrugged. "They promised to treat us like a regular Resistance unit, but that's just talk until they do." He looked back down towards the ship. "I guess they're all hard up for resources, though. So if we don't get anything, I suppose we're not necessarily being snubbed."

"Not necessarily," Alec agreed.

Silence descended over both men again. They both had no illusions about their new lives with the Resistance. Not everyone appreciated the _Minerva_'s insights; not everyone was willing to forgive ZAFT for crimes like Copernicus; not everyone believed that defectors were sincere. And that made a sad kind of sense. The Resistance had fought the worst of the Earth Alliance for three years, before ZAFT showed up and tried to match them crime for crime. The Resistance was simply caught in the middle. Under the same circumstances, he would distrust himself as well.

"So what are we going to do now?" Alec asked.

That was the question Nathaniel had been trying to avoid answering himself. There was no clear answer. The Resistance could probably use a stealthy, gigantic, mobile suit-equipped submarine to ply the oceans and do battle with the Alliance Navy, but the more he thought about it, the more his defection seemed like a purely symbolic move. It wasn't going to change the course of the war. The war would end in space, where the ZAFT fleet was, and the _Aristotle_ could not be _there_.

"Well," he said at last, "our moral compass has led us this far. We ought to follow it the rest of the way."

Alec frowned. "That's not much of an answer."

"I know."

—

"Althea Crater?" sputtered Abbey Windsor, breaking the silence on the _Minerva_'s bridge. At the other end of the mapping console, Gai Murakumo nodded solemnly with crossed arms. "What the hell for? I thought it was ZAFT that we had to worry about."

"Copland's plan," Gai said with a shrug. "Put the Resistance back in the war by taking a major Alliance installation, create a third party, and recreate the conditions at the end of the Valentine War and the Junius War." He narrowed his eyes. "So you can play Lacus Clyne."

Abbey tried to hide her grimace at the thought. "There was only one Lacus Clyne."

"You'll have to be an acceptable substitute." Gai tapped a key on the console and a wire-grid map of the Earth Sphere obligingly appeared. "The Alliance has picked up powerful magnetic fields throughout the shoal zone at L5. Magnetic fields consistent with the use of a Mirage Colloid system. So ZAFT is doing something they don't want the rest of the world to see." He shrugged. "But you kill ZAFT and you leave the world in Djibril's hands. No better. So there has to be a third party."

It made sense, but something about being compared to Lacus Clyne made Abbey's stomach turn—and it didn't help that Gai had neglected to mention just what had become of Lacus Clyne.

"I suppose there's no choice," she said with a sigh, "but that doesn't mean we can just _be_ like the Three Ships Alliance."

"You don't have to," Gai answered. "All you need to do—"

He was cut off by an alarm from Burt's sensor console. They turned as Burt consulted his instruments, and Abbey's stomach made another loop as Burt turned around with a stunned look on his face.

"Vice Captain, I don't know how this happened, but I've got a bunch of radar contacts from the north," he said. "In fleet formation."

Gai frowned. "So they're doing it after all."

"Doing what?"

"It's obvious." He uncrossed his arms and pointed at Burt's screen, and the two dozen blinking dots moving towards the center. "The Alliance. They've come to settle the issue of Gigafloat."

Abbey stared at the screen for a moment. So this was how their rest would end.

She picked up the intercom and dialed in a frequency. "Captain Hawke, report to the _Minerva_ bridge immediately. We have a situation."

—

**June 15th, CE 77 - Heaven's Base, Iceland**

"We're still two days out from Gigafloat, sir," reported Vice Admiral Krane, "but even if it tries to run, we'll be upon it before it can get far. With the _Charlemagne_, they won't stand a chance."

Lord Djibril leaned back in his office chair. "I expect your work to be thorough, admiral. No inconvenient survivors and escapees. Get this done quickly and cleanly."

"Of course, sir."

"Very well. Djibril, out." He switched off the admiral's frequency and keyed in a different one, just in time for a familiar woman in black sunglasses to flicker onto the screen. "Ah, Marshal Markav. I was just about to request a report."

Even with those sunglasses, Markav seemed to have a more manic look about her. It had its uses, Djibril supposed, and she was still handy for that insane zeal with which she descended upon the Resistance and ZAFT, but if all went as planned, this battle would rid him of some inconvenient deadweight. Markav was still useful, but only just. And Lord Djibril had no need for tools that had expired in their usefulness.

"A third of the fleet has gathered at Arzachel," she reported. "The Phantom Pain forces are preparing at Daedalus Crater, but they will be ready to set out in about a week's time. And once we have them gathered, we can set out at your discretion."

Lord Djibril sat back. The plan called for a volley from the Requiem cannon into the shoal zone at Lagrange Point 5 first, to clear some of the rubble and set off a pinball effect that would hopefully make the fleet action unnecessary. But Djibril frowned at that thought. What he hoped for rarely occurred these days.

"Very well, marshal," he said. "Continue your work. Make no move against ZAFT until you receive my authorization."

"Yes sir."

"Djibril, out."

The Earth Alliance president switched off the screen and leaned back to think.

—

**Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

The Reverend Malchio stood at the head of a small auditorium crammed with twice the number of people it was designed to hold. The whole of Gigafloat's population had turned out to hear a portentous speech from the platform's administrator. Malchio shifted uncomfortably on the stage.

"My friends, I've gathered you to relay some grim news," he began. "The Earth Alliance is sending a fleet of warships towards this platform." Gasps went up in the crowd and Malchio raised a hand for quiet. "We have contacted this fleet repeatedly to ask for its mission, but we have received no reply. We can only conclude that they have hostile intent, and as a result, this platform is no longer safe." He paused. "We will have to evacuate.

"I realize for many of you, this platform has been the only safe haven you have known in this long and trying war, and to leave now is to enter a dangerous world—a world that, in the case of some of you, wants to destroy you. I have arranged for a number of safe houses with the Junk Guild in Africa. They will protect you until this storm blows over. If Gigafloat still stands and I am still its administrator, you are welcome to return, but I can make no guarantees." He frowned. "Others have questioned the Alliance's willingness to destroy civilians, and they have paid the price for it. I will not allow that to happen to you.

"Please cooperate with us as we begin evacuation procedures, and please cooperate with the Junk Guild. We will see you safely through this."

Off-stage, Emily squirmed uncomfortably at that feeling of preternatural calm that radiated still from the figure of the reverend. He was calm—but she couldn't say that for anyone else.

—

Onboard the _ReHOME_, the hangar was alive with frenzied preparations. The Professor had managed to wrangle her ship out of refugee transport duty—"they'll just break everything," she had complained—and instead managed to "volunteer" the _ReHOME_ for hauling away sensitive equipment for the Resistance. This had turned Lowe Gear into something of a cavalry general for Power Loaders and sundry other dockyard machinery. From his perch on one of the access walkways, Canard Pars watched in a mix of fascination and horror as Lowe appeared to be almost dancing with a Power Loader while shouting directions to others.

"Are you sure it's safe to trust him with that thing?"

At his side, the Professor smirked. "It's funny."

"If someone gets hurt, it's going to be a problem."

"Yeah, but it won't be _mine_," she said with a shrug. "Shouldn't you be helping out or something?"

"By doing what, exactly? And what are _you_ doing?"

The Professor paused for a moment. "I'm supervising."

"Well so am I."

The Professor appeared ready to send back a snappy retort, but apparently changed her mind. She looked around the ship, and out the hangar doors towards the Gigafloat dry-dock. "Well, it was nice while it lasted. I helped build this thing, y'know."

Canard arched an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're getting all sentimental."

"Just an observation."

—

**Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

The observation lounge overlooking the dock where sat the _Nana Buluku_ had but two occupants, one casually sipping on a glass of red wine as he looked over the ship. The _Girty Lue_-class had been one of the Earth Alliance's finer military accomplishments. Shame it was so expensive or they'd have more.

Gerhardt von Oldendorf took another sip. Of course, expense wasn't the _real_ reason the Alliance hadn't ordered so many more of these ships. Nothing was really too expensive for the combined military might of the planet.

Gerhardt glanced over his shoulder at Irene. "Schadt has had his eye on you, y'know."

Irene crossed her arms. "I'm lucky if it's just his eye."

"Well, he won't be a problem for long." He turned back towards the window. "We would be unwise to stay in one place for long."

"And why's that?"

"Simple fact of the world," answered Gerhardt with a shrug. "It deeply resents anyone who tries to change it. Even as indirectly as I am."

Irene arched an eyebrow. "Which reminds me..."

"It's why I called you up here," he said. "I think it's finally time to tell you what my true intentions are." He turned around. "I know the Phantom Pain sent you to spy on me, Irene." She blinked in surprise. "Did you think I wouldn't? So strange that I should be assigned a Phantom Pain attaché when I neither needed nor asked for one. But I think you'll understand what I'm getting at."

"Which is...?"

Gerhardt turned back towards the ship. "Do you know why I called Emily the 'angel of death?' Why it's so dreadfully ironic that that should be her nickname among the Alliance military?"

"'cuz she's good at killing people?"

"Superficially, I suppose, but that's not quite it." He took another sip. "The angel of death takes those whose time has come. It's nothing personal, really. It's just a matter of destiny. If you are meant to die, the angel of death will sever your cords and take you away. Nobody can control death—nobody but God."

Irene blinked. "What, you want to be God?"

"Of course I do," scoffed Gerhardt. "Everyone does. But that's not the point. The point of creating Emily was always to focus a great deal of power into one individual, an individual open to manipulation and coercion, and then unleash her on the world. She's doing exactly what I want her to do—destabilizing everything. Destroying things that are meant to die." He waved a hand at the tableau before him. "This Alliance. Its time has come. ZAFT's time has come. The Coordinators' time has come. The entire world has reached its end.

"You feel this, don't you?" he asked, and turned towards her. "You feel that this world has gone mad. We have Lord Djibril and his Requiem, we have Marshal Sunogachi and her poison gas, we have who knows what other superweapons they're both working on, and we have the Resistance tearing down civilization in between. And to think it all started with humans trying to play God."

Irene stood in shock for a moment, struggling to form words. "You...you're trying to _destroy the world?_"

"Oh, hardly," he chuckled. "It is time for some things to die. Humans are easy to kill, but institutions? Peoples? Empires? Those take something more." He raised his glass. "So here's to Emily. My wonderful little daughter. The Angel of Death."

—

_**Izumo**_**-class battleship **_**Amaterasu**_**, Arzachel Crater lunar base, the Moon**

The _Amaterasu_'s mighty engines roared to life, and the warship rattled as it lifted itself out of port and took off into the black sky of space.

On the bridge in one of the observer's chairs, Jona Roma Seiran sat back. The duty officers had been skeptical and confused when the Orb Space Fleet's crews and officers showed up not in the typical grays of the Alliance Space Force but in the heroic blue and white of the old uniforms of independent Orb, but ultimately they had made no protest. And that was the way Jona liked it. He idly brushed a speck of dust off his starched white admiral's uniform. Finally he looked like he belonged to Orb again and not Lord Djibril's orbit.

Captain Matsumara glanced over at him. "ETA to _Ame-no-Mihashira_ is fifty-five hours," he said. "Will you be observing from the bridge, sir?"

"Of course I will." He smiled reassuringly. "The future leader of Orb can't be absent as his last and most annoying rival is finally erased from existence, can he?"

"I suppose not, sir."

Jona returned his sight out the bridge windows, where the Orb Space Fleet was taking shape. Seventeen warships was nothing next to the vast armadas of the Earth Alliance, but surely Sahaku had even less to count on—and he still had the Akatsuki.

Cagalli and the Athha family had always trusted the Sahakus not to turn against them in their many political maneuvers against the Seirans. And it had usually been a useful relationship. And, as he reflected on the gleaming Akatsuki standing ready in the _Amaterasu_'s hangar, it turned out that Cagalli Yula Athha was useful still.

—

**June 16th, CE 77 - Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

"I was given to understand that my affiliation with the Resistance would bring me assistance should this day ever come."

In one of Gigafloat's many conference rooms, Meyrin Hawke and the Reverend Malchio all shared anxious looks at the sight of the face on the screen. Rondo Mina Sahaku stared down at them imperiously.

"We know what promise we made," Malchio said, "but we have our own problems. The Alliance has sent a fleet to destroy Gigafloat. We have to evacuate the civilians here, which means there is little we can do for you."

Mina cocked an eyebrow. "Perhaps my cooperation with the Resistance was a mistake?"

"If there was anything we _could_ do," Malchio said, "we would. Your assistance to us in the past has been invaluable. But the Alliance has us pressed."

"Well, I'm sure you understand _my_ position as well, then," Mina said with a contemptuous wave of her hand. "Because frankly, father, you can hide behind Gigafloat's civilian population if need be. I cannot."

Malchio bristled. "I will not use Gigafloat's refugees as shields, Lady Sahaku."

"Then you're going to lose this battle. And so am I."

Meyrin opened her mouth to speak, but Malchio raised a hand to cut her off. "I will do this then, Lady Sahaku," he said. "I will send the _Minerva_." Meyrin's eyes went wide and she shot a glance towards the blind man. "Their repairs are complete and their new Gundams are almost ready for combat. I will require a day to prepare them for launch. They will likely have to be launched in the middle of our battle with the Alliance, and if they can make it, they will likely only do so during the Alliance's attack on _Ame-no-Mihashira_, but they will be carrying ten mobile suits, including eight powerful new prototypes, seven of which the Alliance has never seen before. This is the most I can do for you."

Rondo Mina Sahaku kept her face stony, but Meyrin nearly shivered at the surge of delight in her eyes. "Then I look forward to meeting you, Captain Hawke."

The line went dark—and Meyrin immediately whirled around on Malchio. "Father, we can't go to space now! We have to help defend Gigafloat!"

"The Junk Guild can handle that—"

"No they can't!" Meyrin cried. "That Alliance fleet is bringing the _Charlemagne_ too! You can't handle them! You need us!"

Malchio put a hand on Meyrin's shoulder. "Captain, there are things I cannot explain to you right now, so you must simply trust my judgment when I say that you _must_ go to space. It is not negotiable. I will not let you waste your lives on Earth when there is so much more important work to do in space."

"But father—"

"I cannot do any differently, captain." He nodded towards the door. "Go. You have preparations to make."

—

"So the _Aristotle_ is going to help evacuate civilians," Alec Ladd explained uncomfortably. "Our mobile suit complement will hold off the Alliance as long as we're able, while covering the _Aristotle_'s escape west."

Shinn Asuka nodded resignedly. "I only wish I could be out there too."

"I know, the tuning isn't finished yet." Alec shrugged. "I guess you guys have more important places to be anyway."

"It was Malchio's idea. He wants us to go to space no matter what, even if we have to abandon you guys."

Alec nodded, and then stuck his hand forward. "It's a shame we haven't had our rematch, Asuka. And since you guys are going to space, I guess it won't happen. So good luck out there."

Shinn stared at his hand and then hesitantly shook it. "Thank you."

"Just don't forget, kid."

—

It towered over them, with its huge red and black backpack and its two long swords, and Lowe Gear could not be prouder. He gestured excitedly to the various features of the Gundam Astray Red Frame Kai, and at his side, Emily von Oldendorf tried to look interested.

"It's gonna be great," Lowe said. "The backpack turns into this giant bow and arrow thing and it has this awesome built-in beam cannon, and—" He stopped as he noticed that Emily did not seem all that enthused. "Uh, what's up?"

"N-Nothing," she said quickly.

Lowe threw an arm around her shoulder. "Oh, you. This is, what, the third time I've had to protect Gigafloat from some asshole that wants to blow it up? It'll be cool. Somebody always wants to take this thing apart. Then they try to do it and we show up and kick their asses."

Emily glanced nervously around the hangar. It didn't help that few people on the platform shared Lowe's superhuman optimism, and the panic was beginning to rub off on her. And it especially didn't help that hers would be the only one of the _Minerva_'s new Gundams to take to the field, as the other seven were still being tuned and loaded aboard the ship—and the ship would be leaving partway through.

Which meant abandoning Gigafloat...and Malchio.

She thought back to his words and tried to unpack their meaning. She was supposed to look to her destiny, but all she could see was fate.

—

To be continued...


	35. Phase 35: God Would Understand

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 35 - God Would Understand

—

**June 17th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Spengler**_**-class aircraft carrier **_**David Farragut**_**, near Gigafloat, Indian Ocean**

"Attention Gigafloat," boomed the voice of Vice Admiral Joseph Krane as the fleet steamed into position, "the Earth Alliance Navy demands your immediate surrender of all weapons, equipment, and personnel aboard your platform. If you do not comply, we will open fire."

As expected, the response came in the form of artillery fire from a small army of outdated mobile suits standing at the platform's edge and hovering in the air above it. The shells splashed down uselessly in front of the fleet. Admiral Krane smiled. Now there was no reason to take prisoners.

"Admiral, Gigafloat's mobile suits are moving towards us," one of the deckhands reported.

"Just as I thought," he chuckled, and took up the intercom again, keying in another frequency. "Captain Danilov. Begin your approach. All mobile suit units, take off; all warships, lay down cover fire and advance to Point Theta. Commence the attack!"

—

The humming Gundam Eclipse soared into battle, beam rifle in hand, and Emily scanned the enemies ahead. The Dark Windams of the Phantom Pain were in the lead, before a vast airborne fleet of white and blue Jet Striker Windams. Behind her lay the motley assortment of flight-capable mobile suits that Gigafloat claimed as its defense force. But they were veterans of the war's harshest battles. Perhaps they had a chance—

A wave of beam fire cut off her thoughts, and she threw open the throttle and charged towards the first squadron of Dark Windams. They split up; she flung the Eclipse's left arm up and fired an anchor from its wrist. The claws dug into the first Windam's chest with a crunch, and Emily yanked it closer and speared it through the cockpit with a beam rifle blast. The remaining Windams closed in, their own rifles blazing; Emily whipped around with a crash and slammed the clawed left hand into the Windam's torso, then flung the ruined mobile suit away. A pair of Windams opened fire with their beam rifles, only for the Eclipse to dance around their blasts in a flurry of afterimages and tear them down with a pair of beam shots.

The familiar white bolt split the air before her and she threw the Eclipse downward to dodge a pulsing salvo of beams. And up above, wings of light blazing in the sun, the Crusader Gundam charged towards her with the Vanguard and Artemis on its flanks.

Emily frowned. Usually they were Shinn's problem to deal with—but Shinn wasn't here. She stashed the beam rifle in favor of her beam sword and steeled herself. Months ago, she had been terrified of these pilots as they chased her across the icy waters of the North Atlantic and nearly killed her...but now it was different. And now it was time for a rematch.

—

Canard Pars grunted in pain as his Dreadnought H rattled under the incessant artillery blows of the Earth Alliance's warships. They had no less than thirty ships pounding Gigafloat, and his poor lightwave shield, and the blasts were keeping him from moving or firing back. And that was no way to fight.

The platform shook again, but not from the artillery; instead, Lowe Gear vaulted into the air with a shout and the Red Frame Kai's enormous Tactical Arms backpack sprung to life, sprouting wings and aligning itself as a flight system. The Red Frame drew both its long katanas and charged headlong into the oncoming stream of mobile suits.

"Lowe, what the hell are you doing?" Canard barked. At his side, the Blue Frame Second Revise stepped forward with a beam rifle in hand. "Fool's gonna get killed doing that..."

"He's making a diversion," Gai muttered. "Canard, now is your chance."

The Dreadnought H launched itself skyward and folded its cannons out over its shoulders, and with a pulsing blast, it shot three Windams out of the sky before the rest could react—and just in time for the Red Frame to descend upon them and hack the Striker packs off of two of them, sending them tumbling out of the air. Gai swept in next with the Tactical Arms in its sword configuration to tear through the two falling Windams, then tossed the weapon back onto the Blue Frame's back and rocketed upward to dodge the remaining Windams' fire.

The Dreadnought H slammed back down and filled the sky with blasts from its beam submachinegun. The Windams took cover behind their shields as the Blue and Red Frames returned to Gigafloat with a crash, and then Canard threw the lightwave shield back up as the shells rained down again.

Suddenly, Lowe let out a yelp of surprise as another shell slammed down into the platform in front of the Red Frame's feet—but not from a trajectory from the ships. Gai snapped his attention skyward—at the three mobile suits approaching from above, two of them on sub-wings, all of them with the faces of Gundams.

"I see we have guests," he said. "Canard, Lowe, split up."

The three mobile suits down below broke their ranks and charged up into the sky as the Gale Strike, Hail Buster, and Regen Duel went on the attack.

—

"Dammit, George! Take this seriously!"

Elijah Kiel grimaced as his custom ZAKU shuddered under a painful missile hit to its shield. The Phase Shift armor could handle the blow, but whoever did that was going to pay—

"_Nothing_ is impossible for the _First Coordinator!_" the voice on the other hand answered, and George Glenn's yellow Civilian Astray sailed through the air with both its beam sabers in hand. It slammed headlong into an oncoming Windam and eagerly plunged both its sabers into the mobile suit's cockpit, then leapt back off and landed with a crash on a Guul subflight system that rose up from the platform to meet it. "I was an ace in the Reconstruction War, y'know!"

"_I know!_" Elijah snapped. "Now get down from there before you get yourself killed!"

"Oh, silly, I can't actually get killed out here! I'm back on the ship!"

The ZAKU flung itself upward and fired off a salvo from its beam rifle to scatter the Windams. George backed away and batted their blasts aside effortlessly with his beam sabers; one of the Windams charged in close, but the yellow Civilian Astray slashed its beam rifle in two with its left-hand saber and ran it through on the right-hand blade, then ducked away as it exploded.

"Now, who else wants a piece of the Great and Powerful George Glenn?" the First Coordinator cackled.

Elijah took the opportunity to scan the battlefield—and try not to feel _too_ discouraged. It was all going pretty poorly so far, but then again, it was early yet and—

"Never fear, Elijah!" George crowed. "We have the Angel of Death on our side!"

"Wha—George! How did you—_get back here!_"

The Civilian Astray plunged back into battle, and Elijah bit back a curse as he followed.

—

Rattling under the blows of the Alliance's mobile suits, the Proto Abyss lunged up over the fire and rained beam blasts down on the Windams, forcing them to break formation behind their shields. Alec sneered in contempt at the foes below.

"Just a bunch of cannon fodder...send me someone _real_ to fight!"

The Proto Abyss flung itself to the side to avoid a volley of bazooka shells, then fired back with a cannon blast of its own. The Windams darted apart again, but one was too slow and went staggering out of the sky in flames. He lined up for another wave of beam fire again to force the Windams back further.

"Commander Ladd," Nathaniel's voice spoke up, and Alec spared a quick glance towards the auxiliary screen. "The _Aristotle_ is moving out soon. We'll need the waters clear."

"It doesn't look like they brought any amphibious mobile suits of their own," Alec answered with a shrug. "They must be looking to settle this—" He stopped short. "Wait...there! Does Gigafloat have any amphibious mecha?"

Already a handful of mobile suits were diving into the water. Nathaniel let out a grim sigh. "We'll launch what we can as well," he said, "but at some point we're going to have to surface to launch our aerial MS, and we'll be vulnerable."

Alec glanced back up towards the battle. The Windams charged towards him again; he warded them off again with another wave of beam fire. "Alright. I'll be here. Just don't take too long."

—

Trojan Noiret yelped in surprise as a beam blast slammed down into the Gigafloat surface and sent a column of flame lancing upwards. He jerked the DOM Trooper's controls back and ignited the beam sabers on its custom rifle. Up above, the Vent Savior Gundam promptly transformed to its mobile suit mode and landed next to the DOM, and both mobile suits turned upwards.

...and out of the sky came the crimson Nebula Blitz and the white Nix Providence, standing atop their black and red subflight lifters.

"I recognize those," Trojan muttered. "They're Emily's little buddies."

"Huh?" Lily blinked questioningly.

"Whenever we've had to fight the _Charlemagne_, those two always show up with those other three Gundams to fight her."

Lily turned her eyes back towards the two Gundams with a scowl. "Oh yeah, huh..."

Trojan curled his fists around the DOM's controls, tension bubbling through his veins. "Keep the two of them in my range so I can support you from the ground," he said, "and we'll—"

"Watch out!"

Lily shoved the DOM aside with the Vent Savior's shield and rocketed up into the air as the Nebula Blitz lunged forward with an upward swipe from its beam saber. It charged towards the DOM and brought its saber around again; Trojan stabbed the custom beam rifle forward and used the two blades to catch the Nebula Blitz's saber, but the crimson mobile suit rammed the DOM with its shoulder and sent Trojan staggering back.

"Trojan!" Lily cried, and moved to intervene—but the Nix Providence sent a wall of beam fire between the two mobile suits and forced the Vent Savior upwards. "Oh, you wanna play too, huh?" She wheeled the Vent Savior around to face her foe.

The Nix Providence's eyes flashed to life and the beam saber on the tip of its shield on its left hand lit up as the white Gundam charged.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

The _Charlemagne_ quaked under a near miss from an exploding missile, and Ivan Danilov cast his eyes towards the vast expanse of Gigafloat below. The Resistance's mobile suits had already taken off, and the Windams were already inexorably pushing them back—and those left on the platform would be no match for the _Charlemagne_'s firepower.

"Captain," the weapons officer said, "we're in firing range."

So that was it. Danilov spared Gigafloat one more look and hoped someone had had the foresight to evacuate the innocent.

"Very well. Open fire."

Again the ship rattled, as its railguns and beam cannons let loose a wall of firepower that slammed headlong into the platform. Mobile suits vanished in a vast plume of fire and the _Charlemagne_ angled its bow up, the cannon in its center glowing with gathering energy.

Danilov glanced up at the sky, where he could see the flickering wings of light of the Gundam that his men called Midnight, doing battle with the wings of the Crusader. A battle of good and evil. He was starting to miss those.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_

Nathaniel Hatias watched with crossed arms as his men eased the mighty _Aristotle_ towards the water's surface. There was a huge, long, dark shape visible up ahead against the sun; it was that gigantic Earth Alliance battleship, the _Charlemagne_, the Phantom Pain flagship that was leading this assault. With all that firepower, it wouldn't take long to break through Gigafloat's defenses—unless they did something about it. And as loaded as they were with evacuees, there was little they _could_ do...

"Depth is one hundred meters," the diving officer announced. "Ninety, eighty, seventy, sixty..." Nathaniel tensed as his ship neared the surface. "Breaching the surface now—"

"Missiles, fire!"

The _Aristotle_ launched a cloud of missiles into the sky, and they immediately arced downward towards the surprised _Charlemagne_. The black warship's CIWS emplacements roared to life and spat a torrent of bullets into the oncoming missiles—but enough made it through to slam into the _Charlemagne_'s armor, throw off the ship's aim, and send its salvo of blazing beam shots sailing wide of Gigafloat.

"Mobile suits, launch!" barked Nathaniel. "Don't give them a chance to retaliate!"

The _Aristotle_'s mobile suits roared out of the vertical catapults and stormed into battle, and the _Charlemagne_'s own black Windams scrambled to put themselves between their mothership and the attackers. Nathaniel frowned at the sight—they had reacted quicker than he'd expected.

"Helm, move us directly under their hull and keep us there," he said. "We'll bring them down yet!"

—

**Gigafloat**

The ZAKU went flailing back towards Gigafloat from a hard bazooka shell hit to the shield, and Elijah groaned as he struggled for control over his reeling mobile suit. Kaite's combat lessons were really not helping him out here against an entire fleet. The ZAKU slammed back down into the platform; Elijah struggled to put the ZAKU up on its feet, but his blood went cold as he looked up and saw a Windam sweeping down with its beam rifle trained on his cockpit—

...and an instant later, something black and orange lunged out of nowhere and slammed headlong into the Windam. The Alliance mobile suit struggled for a moment, but two enormous fangs went smashing straight through its body, and then pulled back out and let the ruined machine topple into the ocean, leaving Elijah to stare in disbelief at Andrew Bartfeldt's custom BuCUE, standing tall against the attackers.

"_Kisato?_" Elijah sputtered. "I thought you weren't coming out here!"

"There's no need to put my _number one fan_ in harm's way!" answered George Glenn's voice. Elijah blinked and looked back up—where the yellow Civilian Astray was still doing battle with the Windams aboard its Guul—and then back down at the BuCUE.

"Wait, how—"

"Multiple receptors, silly!" George admonished. "_Hey!"_

Elijah snapped his attention over his shoulder, where another Windam was coming down—just in time to see something slam into it and send it staggering into the sea, and the _ReHOME_'s bright orange Works GINN stomped out of a warehouse with a linear rifle in hand.

"Why, at this rate I can control a whole _army!_" George laughed. "We'll see if I'm as great a general as I was an ace pilot! It'll be fun!"

Elijah painfully put the ZAKU back on its feet and looked back towards the enemy forces, still on the move and still undeterred by the wall of firepower Gigafloat's defenders had thrown into the air. A whole army might be what they'd need.

—

Lowe Gear ground his teeth in frustration as the Red Frame Kai's swords clashed with the Gale Strike's blades. The Alliance machine darted to the side with a blast from one of its massive thrusters and swung around, aiming for the Red Frame's waist; Lowe whipped around and parried the blow with one of his swords, then swung up the second to deflect another strike. The Gale Strike surged forward anyways, eyes flashing furiously; Lowe slammed on the thrusters and pounded the Red Frame's knee into the Gale Strike's torso to knock it back, but it stabbed upwards with both its blades to deflect his follow-up attack.

"Persistent little bastard, aren't ya!" Lowe snapped.

The Gale Strike responded with a charge that sent the Red Frame reeling, and Lowe desperately flung up his swords as the white and blue mobile suit commenced with a bone-jarring chain of relentless sword blows, driving the Red Frame back.

"Y'know, I'm all for a good fight now and then," Lowe growled as he blocked the Gale Strike's blows, "but this is just pissing me off!"

He slammed back the controls, sheathed the swords, and sent the Red Frame spiraling back towards Gigafloat. The Gale Strike followed—but an instant later, Lowe whirled around with the Tactical Arms IIL in hand, transformed into its Arrow mode, and sent a pulsing yellow beam streaking towards the oncoming enemy. The Gale Strike rocketed out of harm's way—just as the Red Frame Kai charged forward, its Tactical Arms converted to a massive claw, and swiped at the white and blue mobile suit. And as the Gale Strike struggled to regain control, the Red Frame lunged back up with the Tactical Arms back on its back in subflight mode, swords raised again, and brought them down with a crash onto the Gale Strike's upturned blades.

"I don't know why you guys insist on trying to destroy this thing!" He charged forward and started up his own bone-jarring string of sword blows, driving the Gale Strike back before him. "I don't know why you guys think the only way to use these machines is to destroy things!" The Gale Strike staggered back under the assault. "There's a better way than that!"

Undeterred, the Gale Strike flung itself backward to avoid the sweeping swords, then charged forward again, and the swordfight resumed.

—

"That's just no fair!" screamed Lily Thevalley as the Vent Savior Gundam spiraled away from its own blasts, deflected back at it by the Nix Providence Gundam's positron reflector. The Vent Savior whirled around, beam saber in hand instead of its rifle, and pitched forward—only for the Nix Providence to ignite the saber at the end of its composite shield and slap the blade aside. Lily flung the silver Gundam down, back towards Gigafloat, as the Nix Providence opened fire with the DRAGOONs on its hips again.

The Vent Savior landed heavily on one knee and Lily glanced over to the left, where Trojan was still in the middle of a fierce swordfight with the nimble Nebula Blitz. She darted forward, rocketed back up into the air again as the Nix Providence came down from behind, then backflipped, and fired back with the plasma cannons. The Nix Providence ducked aside; Lily fired again, and this time the white Gundam shrugged the blasts off with its positron reflector and fired back.

"Trojan! How do I get through a positron reflector?" Lily cried.

Something on Trojan's end blew up before his face reappeared on the auxiliary screen. "Beam saber, remember?"

The Nix Providence charged forward again; Lily ducked between its beam blasts and swung her saber up towards the mobile suit's cockpit, only for a stab from the composite shield to deflect her blow.

"Oh yeah," she grumbled, "the _hard_ way..."

—

Alec Ladd descended on the Windam before him with a scream and gutted it with the Proto Abyss's beam lance. The ruined mobile suit staggered from the sky; Alec flung his Gundam to the side and let loose a torrent of beam fire that sent a Windam squadron up above scrambling for distance. A squadron of BABIs took the opportunity to lance up from below and shower the Windams with beam fire, sending two of their number sailing into the sea in flames.

Alec took the chance to glance over his shoulder and check on the mission's status. The transports and their cargoes of refugees and Resistance equipment were still streaming west, towards the Kenyan coast. And in the meantime—

"Commander Ladd!" someone's voice shouted. "Enemy breakthrough at sector H!"

"Already?" He flung the Proto Abyss down towards the platform, where the Resistance's mobile suits were already backing away from an onslaught of artillery and mobile suits. "Jesus, don't they know how to fight?"

With a crash, the Proto Abyss sent a torrent of beam fire down into the Alliance's ranks and forced them to break formation. The Windams scattered and four of their number vaulted into the air to attack the charging green Gundam. Alec warded them off with another beam volley and burst through their numbers, angling down towards the platform. The Proto Abyss landed hard in front of the charging Alliance troops and sent them reeling back with a third volley of beam fire.

"_Aristotle!_ We need reinforcements, sector H!" Alec barked; one of the Windams swept in close, beam rifle blazing and pounding blasts against the Proto Abyss's shoulder shells. Alec ground his teeth, ducked down beneath the blasts, and then lunged back up to plant the beam lance's shimmering blade in the Windam's exposed back. And as it collapsed to the deck and exploded, the surviving Resistance mobile suits fanned out and opened fire.

Gigafloat shook again as the Alliance fleet pounded yet another volley of cannon fire into the deck, and Alec bit back a curse as the platform rattled. If these were the survivors of the Resistance's past battles, then perhaps they had only been lucky, and not so skilled.

—

Emily cringed as the Crusader Gundam's sword slammed down against her own. So this was why Shinn was having so much trouble with this guy lately.

The Crusader flung her forward with a swing of its sword and charged after her. Emily darted over its head, then to the side to avoid a beam cannon salvo from the Vanguard Gundam. And no sooner had she done that than the Artemis lunged out of nowhere, beam saber held high, and slammed it down against the Eclipse's beam sword. Emily kicked off hard from the Artemis's chest and ducked down again, just in time to avoid a sweeping horizontal sword slash from behind by the Crusader.

"I guess it wouldn't be a battle if I didn't have to fight a bunch of Gundams," she grumbled, and sent the Eclipse spiraling back down towards Gigafloat. The Vanguard let fly another wave of beam fire; Emily danced around it amid a flurry of afterimages and whipped her sword up to deflect a blow from the Crusader, then rocketed to the right to avoid a saber stab from the Artemis. The Crusader barreled past its ally and slammed the Eclipse backward with a heavy sword blow, and then leveled off its "Agni Kai" cannon for a finishing blast.

The Eclipse swatted the blast aside with its beam shield and then wove a blurry, shimmering path through the Vanguard's follow-up wave of firepower. Emily turned towards the light blue Gundam overhead; the Artemis lunged into her path and she threw her sword up to parry its lethal stab. The Crusader came in next from behind, sword upraised; Emily threw the Eclipse to the side, letting the Crusader pass by and catch nothing but air with its sword.

"But this time," she said, "it's going to go differently!"

The three Gundams arrayed themselves before her again, eyes glowing combatively, and Emily scowled back as they lit up their thrusters and charged.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Frustration billowed up from Athrun Zala's heart as he frantically worked on the final touches of the Celestial Justice Gundam's operating system. Unfortunately, "final touches" included important parts without which the Gundam's response time and information systems would be unacceptably slow, and that would probably just get him killed.

But in practical terms, that meant he, and the other new Gundams with the same problem, couldn't be out in the battle.

It was all the more frustrating because while Athrun had always been adequate in working with computers, it had been Kira who had truly mastered them. Athrun could build the computer just fine, but Kira had always been the one who could program it, finding flaws and errors and bad code with preternatural precision and speed. He had singlehandedly completed the Strike Gundam's operating system in the middle of battle—although it helped that Miguel had been something of an idiot about that—and he'd written the M1 Astray's OS and the Strike's later Natural-friendly system almost from scratch.

And, naturally, that meant he was now an enemy and completely inaccessible for finishing _this_ damned thing.

He wiped his brow and took a moment to take stock of everybody through his Newtype senses. Frustration seemed to be the common denominator, but as he passed over the silent Aurora Gundam and its cranky occupant, he felt it bubble up again inside himself and send him plunging back into work. He had something to return to, and damned if an incomplete OS was going to keep that from happening.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Ivan Danilov clenched his fists around the armrests of the _Charlemagne_'s captain's chair as his warship shook. Those missiles were punching through his ship's laminated armor, the smoke and impacts obscured his vision and distracted his men from their real mission, and they were starting to interfere with the weapons systems. At this point they would probably have to pull back, but first...

"Enemy submarine's MS squadrons have been forced back to Gigafloat," the sensor officer reported. "Another missile wave, sir."

Danilov frowned as the CIWS cut them out of the sky. "Gottfrieds, aim at the space just above the submarine and fire—_now!_"

The _Charlemagne_'s guns obligingly sent a volley of green beams lancing by over the _Aristotle_'s hull, just as another missile salvo lifted off. The explosion shoved the _Aristotle_ backwards and left the upper side of the hull a blackened, mangled mess. The massive submarine began to back up in the water, still launching missiles out of its remaining tubes, and the mobile suits descended down over the ship to cover its retreat.

Danilov sat back and rubbed the side of his head. "Vera. Damage report."

"Damage level B along the ventral side, six CIWS emplacements knocked out, and five hull breaches. One of them is very close to Levitator C."

Danilov held back a smile. Providence had intervened. "They'd blow us out of the sky like that," he grumbled, and keyed in a frequency on his intercom. "Admiral Krane, this is Captain Danilov. We've driven off that giant ZAFT submarine, but we've taken serious damage ourselves. We'll have to withdraw."

Krane scowled back. "You'll be throwing off our entire timetable."

"They've come very close to knocking out my levitator. One more hit and I'll lose altitude, and that'll be the end of our timetable anyway." Danilov shrugged. "Plus you would have to help defend my ship as we get the auxiliary units online."

"Very well," said Krane with a sigh, "just keep the barrage up to open lines in the enemy defense as you pull back. We're on the cusp of victory, captain."

Danilov looked back towards Gigafloat—and beyond, to the small armada of ships and planes racing away, to the west, towards Africa. "Understood. Danilov, out."

—

**Gigafloat**

The Blue Frame Second Revise backed away from its sub-wing riding foe and abandoned the shattered remnants of its shield. The bazooka that the Regen Duel carried was stronger than Gai had remembered.

The orange and white mobile suit feinted to the left, then darted to the right and showered the Blue Frame with beam and railgun fire. Gai threw the Blue Frame down below the blasts and opened fire with the Tactical Arms' Gatling gun; the bullets bounced harmlessly off the Phase Shift armor as the Regen Duel whirled around and fired back with its beam rifle. Gai switched his own beam rifle to the Blue Frame's left hand to draw a beam saber with the right—just as the Regen Duel holstered its railgun and drew a saber of its own. The two mobile suits plunged together and their sabers clashed in a blinding display of sparks.

With a start, the Regen Duel charged forward and flung the Blue Frame back—and then abruptly dropped down, flipped over, and rocketed away.

Gai blinked in surprise. "Retreating...? What...?"

Elijah's face suddenly appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Gai, the _ReHOME_ is about to leave. Malchio's sending us out. It's time for us to go."

"He's giving up already?" Gai glanced down dubiously towards Gigafloat. "The battle isn't lost yet."

"He's insisting," Elijah answered, "and he wants us to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible. You've got to come back."

Gai opened his mouth to speak again—but then something else occurred to him. "Is he...?"

"Yes."

"I...I see." The Blue Frame rocketed back down towards Gigafloat. "Very well. Get everyone aboard and we'll get going."

—

With a heavy crash, the DOM Trooper lurched back as the Nebula Blitz planted a lancer dart through its left arm and into a building over the DOM's shoulder. Trojan bit back a curse as he yanked on the arm and found himself stuck. The Nebula Blitz charged forward, beam saber lit up—

"Not that easy!" Trojan roared, and jammed the controls to the side. The Nebula Blitz's saber tore through the DOM's left shoulder, ripping off the arm. He darted away—only for the Nebula Blitz to whip around with its anchor open and slam it down onto the DOM's other arm. The red mobile suit yanked hard, pulling its green foe towards its waiting beam saber—

And an instant later, a wave of beam fire came down around the Nebula Blitz and forced it to vault into the air, abandoning its prey. Trojan looked up in surprise as the Vent Savior slammed down next to him.

"Lily! What the—"

"Look out!" she shouted, and shouldered the wounded DOM aside as the Nebula Blitz charged again. With a resounding crash she met it blow for blow with her saber.

Up above, the Nix Providence leveled off its hip-mounted DRAGOONs and showered the battlefield with beam fire. Trojan fired back with his beam rifle—but the Nebula Blitz seized its opportunity to knock the Vent Savior aside and charge towards the DOM. Trojan brought his rifle around and opened fire, only to see the Nebula Blitz somersault over his blasts. It landed hard behind him, and before he knew what happened, two claws slammed onto the DOM's torso from either side—and then the battery began running down.

"What the—he's stealing my energy?" Trojan yelped. The cockpit sparked menacingly and the screens darkened, and up ahead, the Nix Providence readied itself to fire again.

As the beams lanced forward, the Vent Savior flung itself into their path to protect the DOM's body. The silver Gundam shuddered as it lost its right arm, right leg, right wing, head, and the two long plasma cannons on its back—but then it flung its shield away, seized the DOM with its remaining hand, tore it out of the Nebula Blitz's grip, and rocketed away with its remaining engines.

"L-Lily!" Trojan sputtered. "What was _that?_"

"Malchio wants us to get back to the ship," Lily said breathlessly, "and if I let you die, then Emily would be sad."

Left behind, the Nebula Blitz raised its beam rifle—but the Nix Providence drifted down in front of it and nodded off towards the battlefield, and the Nebula Blitz spared its retreating enemies one last glare before the two Gundams took off.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"The civilians and Resistance personnel are evacuated," Malchio said sternly. "The soldiers are retreating. The mass driver is clear, but our window of opportunity is running short. It is time for you to go."

Meyrin sat in shock in the captain's chair. "Father, you can't seriously expect us to abandon you here!"

"You must—"

"We won't! You don't have to do this!" She waved a hand at the crew. "We can take you with us! You can help us more when we reach space!"

Malchio's brow furrowed. "Captain Hawke," he said, with an edge in his voice that she had never heard before, "we do not have the luxury of time to discuss this further. I will say this once more. You have to go to space. Take up Lacus Clyne's mantle. Become a force for the human race's salvation. End this war before it consumes the world. I will send you to space, but I cannot do that if we spend so much time arguing that our window of opportunity closes. Now go, before the Alliance fleet damages the mass driver."

Meyrin pushed back her tears. "Father, they're going to kill you and take Gigafloat for themselves."

"No, they won't."

"How are you going to stop them?"

Malchio sat back. "That is not your concern. Promise me, Captain Hawke."

"Father—"

"_Promise me!_"

His words rang through the silent bridge, and Meyrin finally swallowed the lump in her throat. "A-Alright," she said, "but—"

"That is enough for me," Malchio said, and the screen went dark.

—

**Gigafloat**

The Gundam Eclipse somersaulted over its adversaries and then ducked aside from a wave of beam fire. Emily glared up at her foes—but the Crusader, Vanguard, and Artemis were rocketing away, and in their place was a quartet of charging white and blue Jet Striker Windams.

"Where are _they_ going?" she mumbled, and then charged towards the Windams. The Alliance mobile suits broke ranks, but the Eclipse dove down into them anyway and sawed the first one in two with her beam sword. The second lunged up behind her, beam rifle leveled at her exposed back; she whipped around and slammed her left-hand claw clear through its cockpit, then hurled the rest of the machine towards the sea. The other two Windams opened fire; the Eclipse danced effortlessly through their blasts and then spiraled back up towards them. They both backed away, fear rippling out of the cockpits; Emily charged forward and slashed them both in two as they tried to evade.

"Emily!" Roxy's voice spoke up. "The hell are you still doing up there? Get back here, we're about to launch on the mass driver!"

Emily blinked. "The mass driver? We're evacuating?"

"Yeah, now hurry up!"

"But—Malchio! Gigafloat! What about—"

"Now is not the time for questions, Emily," Meyrin's voice interrupted—and Emily almost heard the sound of tears behind her words. "Get back here. Now."

Emily stared down at Gigafloat desolately for a moment. Malchio was still down there; she could feel the tiny soothing pinpoint of his presence somewhere in the bowels of the platform. And they were leaving without him.

But he would want her to go. He would want her to find her destiny.

She swallowed her tears and rocketed back towards the _Minerva_.

—

"Protect the mass driver!" cried Alec Ladd as the Proto Abyss spiraled through a wave of beam fire from the oncoming Windams. Down below, the Resistance's last aerial mobile suits were being torn to shreds. A DINN dove up next to the Proto Abyss and its panicked pilot opened his mouth to say something—only for a beam shot to blow him out of the sky. Alec turned towards the attackers and poured a wave of beam fire after them. Two of the Windams exploded, the others darted away.

"Commander, there's no one left," someone from the _Aristotle_ spoke up. "It's time to go."

Alec glanced back at the battle, and the charging squadrons of Windams—and then back down at the _Minerva_. "No," he said, "you go on ahead. I have to stay here and protect the mass driver until the _Minerva_ can launch."

"What—" the other man sputtered. "That's suicide!"

"No," Alec said, and his face lit up with a grin, "it's duty." The Proto Abyss's eyes flashed combatively. "See you on the other side!"

He switched off the line and charged. The Windams focused their fire, only for the Proto Abyss to painfully take it all against its shoulder shells. Alec plunged forward with a shout and slammed his lance through the first Windam's stomach, then ripped it in two and fired a wave of beam fire into the rest.

A bazooka shell slammed into the Proto Abyss from above. Alec grunted as the Proto Abyss rocked from the blow—and the pause gave the other Windams all the chance they needed. The Proto Abyss shuddered painfully as the Windams focused their fire on it, and Alec moved the shoulder shells into position as the blasts blew away his mobile suit's extremities.

"Looks like we won't get that fight after all, Asuka," he said with a grin, even as the Proto Abyss spewed sparks and smoke.

The Windams charged in, beam rifles leveled—but then the world shook as the mass driver fired and the _Minerva_ began its ascent along the sloping track.

Alec charged forward with a roar and sent a wave of beams slicing through the Windams. A blast from the enemy slammed into the Proto Abyss's chest, the mobile suit sparked again, and Alec grinned as the Proto Abyss vanished in a plume of fire.

—

**ZAFT submarine supercarrier **_**Aristotle**_

The conn was silent as the line went dead from the Proto Abyss. Nathaniel Hatias closed his eyes. This battle had seen sacrifices enough—and it wasn't done yet.

"C-Captain," one of the officers said, "we're...we're out of enemy range."

Nathaniel let out a breath and shoved down his emotions. Alec and the others could be grieved later. The sacrificing was not yet done, but with the _Aristotle_ brimming with refugees and equipment, and with a convoy to protect and a destination to reach, there was work yet to be done to make sure that those sacrifices were not in vain. Alec had not died so that the _Aristotle_ could be sunk here.

They had to go. He knew that. These refugees would need protection from what would surely be Alliance retaliation later. The _Aristotle_ could provide that, and he himself could provide leadership to Gigafloat's dazed and demoralized surviving staff.

But the war had to go elsewhere. The _Minerva_ would go there, and Alec had died to see to that. They would go to ZAFT and destroy the lunatics that had taken over the Coordinators' fury and turned it towards genocide. They would make everything right.

It was bittersweet, almost. These bedraggled Resistance fighters had spent three years in the mud and chaos of the Earth Sphere, and they had looked to their faith in the _Minerva_ to somehow lift them from despair. Eventually they would be delivered from their suffering. And yet here he was, Nathaniel Hatias, former officer of ZAFT, left with only that faith to sustain him.

"Activate the silent drive," he ordered. "We are leaving."

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Spengler**_**-class aircraft carrier **_**David Farragut**_

Admiral Krane pointed furiously at the rattling mass driver and its steadily accelerating occupant. "I don't care what it takes!" he barks. "Stop them! Bomb the track!"

The fleet's guns boomed and the shells slammed down into the platform, but the mass driver roared and with a mighty blast of exhaust, the _Minerva_ rocketed into the air and spread its wings.

Krane slammed a fist down onto the armrest. "Dammit!"

"Sir," the _Farragut_'s captain spoke up, "the _Perry_ is reporting in. Enemy action around Gigafloat has ceased." He gestured tentatively towards Gigafloat, framed by the setting sun amid the fiery sky. "We won."

The admiral took a moment to let out a sigh. "Yes," he said, "I suppose we did." He stood up. "Move the fleet forward to begin securing the platform. We've got quite a prize for Lord Djibril—"

The admiral and the bridge went silent as the auxiliary screens flickered to life—to reveal the pale-skinned blind man with a cane, standing in an empty control room. Krane frowned.

"Are you surrendering?" he asked.

The Reverend Malchio smiled. "I am doing no such thing, Admiral Krane," he said. "But first, I wish to congratulate you on your victory."

"Fine lot of nerve _you've_ got," Krane sneered. "Consider yourself under arrest by the Earth Alliance for harboring Coordinators and Resistance forces. You've got a lot of evil to answer for, preacher."

Malchio did not so much as flinch. "Evil? I don't think you are the one best suited to accuse me of evil, admiral. The Earth Alliance has persecuted an entire people for their genes and oppressed the entire world. And you have served them loyally and enthusiastically. I am a man of God, admiral. I can't simply stand by and let such things happen without doing anything to interfere."

Krane scoffed. "My men are already on their way to take you down. You can't do anything now. Save your self-righteous speech for someone else."

Malchio raised his left hand—and revealed the cylindrical detonator within it. Krane felt his blood freeze in his veins. "On the contrary, admiral," he said. "In my life I have been entrusted with things that I was told must not fall into the hands of those with evil intent." He smiled. "And while it breaks my heart to do this, I will have to answer for it to a far higher authority than you. But I believe that God will understand the steps I am taking."

The bridge was silent. Krane's jaw dropped as he remembered what _else_ lurked inside Gigafloat's holds. He sprang forward. "All ships, destroy Gigafloat! Target the platform! Kill him! _Kill him!_"

Malchio raised the detonator high. "I should like to leave you with a quote, gentlemen. A quote for those who would oppress and persecute to keep in mind, no matter where they may do their evil in our war-torn world."

The fleet's guns boomed again, the missiles rained down, explosions ripped across the surface of Gigafloat—but only a brief burst of static ripped across Malchio's image.

"_Find him!_" Krane shrieked.

"'Even as I have seen,'" said Malchio, "'they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.'"

"Land the troops!" Krane screamed. "Target the core! Target everything! _Now!_"

"'By the blast of God they perish,'" Malchio's voice rang out.

Krane looked up in horror as Malchio held the detonator high.

"'And by the breath of His nostrils are they consumed.'"

Malchio pressed the button, and the world went white.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

The bridge of the _Minerva_ was silent as the mushroom cloud bubbled up beneath them, far below. The shockwave followed, but it was almost unnoticeable at this altitude, with the ship moving at escape velocity and the engines running at full burn.

But the shockwave still echoed inside Meyrin Hawke's head and rattled her soul. She bowed her head and made no attempt to hide her tears.

And the _Minerva_ soared into space.

—

To be continued...


	36. Phase 36: Ame no Mihashira

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 36 - _Ame-no-Mihashira_

—

**June 17th, CE 77 - **_**Izumo**_**-class battleship **_**Amaterasu**_**, near **_**Ame-no-Mihashira**_**, Earth orbit**

The _Amaterasu_ quaked as _Ame-no-Mihashira_'s desperate defenders managed to sneak a missile entirely too close for comfort to the ship's hull before the CIWS emplacements sliced it out of the black sky. In the observer's chair, Jona Roma Seiran frowned as the shockwave dissipated. Perhaps that was just a fluke.

In fact, it could only be a fluke, because the fleet that had mustered to defend the Sahaku family's last redoubt consisted only of the _Izumo_, five _Drake_-class destroyers, a _Nelson_-class battleship, two _Laurasia_-class frigates, and a _Nazca_-class destroyer—and those five _Drake_s were currently being reduced to four, as a flight of Murasames lanced its way through the ship's defenses and peppered its hull with beam fire.

But Rondo Mina Sahaku was a wily one and those old mobile suits that Murata Azrael had given her were holding up well. Mara would have to dispose of them.

"Well," Jona said with a sigh, catching Captain Matsumara's attention, "I suppose we couldn't have expected Lady Sahaku to go down without a fight."

"She won't last much longer, sir," Matsumara said with a smirk. "The Lohengrins are almost charged."

"Good," Jona said, "then move us—"

"Sir, new heat signature detected!" the sensor officer cried. "It's...the _Minerva!_"

"The _Minerva?_" Jona exclaimed. "How—"

The rest of his sentence disappeared as the vast shimmering column of a positron cannon's blast slammed head-on into the _Drake_-class destroyer off the _Amaterasu_'s starboard bow and plowed clear through the ship's hull. The broken vessel exploded with a thundering fireball, and Jona squinted through the flames in disbelief as the faraway _Minerva_ spread its wings and roared into the battle.

"Where the hell did _they_ come from?" Jona shouted. "I thought they were on Gigafloat!"

"_Minerva_ is launching mobile suits, sir!" the sensor officer added. He blinked in disbelief. "There's...eight of them?"

Jona turned his eyes back towards the battlefield. Gundams or not, the _Minerva_ wouldn't stop him here.

—

The Celestial Justice Gundam charged into battle in its mobile armor mode, its claws still folded tightly against its body, monoeye sweeping over the battlefield. In the cockpit, Athrun Zala sat back and savored the hum of the mobile suit's engine as he finally returned to the war. He had spent far too long on the sidelines—but the Celestial Justice would change _that_.

He glanced to his right, where Viveka's Aurora Gundam sailed into combat next to him in its own streamlined mobile armor form. She smirked down at him from the auxiliary screen. "Your Gundam still looks like a crab."

Athrun's eyes flicked back over the battlefield. "It will get the job done." He smirked back. "Ready to get back to work?"

Viveka's grin said everything he needed to hear.

The two Gundams rocketed forward and Athrun let loose a blast from the "Typhoon" multi-phase cannon in the subflight lifter's nose. The blast coursed its way through two oncoming white, black, and orange Windams and blew them both apart—and before the survivors knew what hit them, the Celestial Justice transformed, slammed into their ranks, and impaled them both on the subflight lifter's two three-pronged claws.

Athrun charged forward with a wave of beam fire and drove back the mobile suits in front of him. They rocketed upwards and struggled for distance—only for a wave of beam and plasma fire from the Aurora Gundam to tear them apart and destroy three of them in thundering explosions. The Justice seized its opportunity, rushed towards the staggering mobile suits, and tore them down with another volley of beam rifle blasts. One of the survivors whirled around from behind, beam saber drawn in lieu of its useless rifle—only for Athrun to swing around, a beam saber on the Justice's foot blazing to life, and slash the attacker in half.

A flash of gold from far above caught his eye, and the Aurora came down next to him, as the last of the Windams died their fiery deaths.

"The hell's that thing?" Viveka asked, but Athrun felt his stomach turn in recognition.

"The Akatsuki."

"The Akatsuki? I thought you destroyed that thing."

"So did I." He magnified the image and frowned at the image of the golden mobile suit with the old _Shiranui_ pack, and its beam turrets blazing around _Ame-no-Mihashira_'s faltering defenders. But there was no pressure from the cockpit, so this must have been modified for non-Newtypes.

He glanced over at Viveka. It wasn't Cagalli's machine anymore. It wasn't Mwu's, either. It was just an enemy—and he would destroy it.

The two Gundams took off together.

—

An oncoming squadron of Murasames let loose a withering torrent of beam fire, but Rau Le Creuset merely laughed in its face as he deflected it with the Judgment Gundam's beam shield.

"It's good to have one of these at my command again," he chuckled. "Now let's see what you can do!"

The Judgment Gundam's eyes flashed and the two pods on its back lifted off and roared into the battle. They both deployed a large, beam gun-laden DRAGOON and four of the smaller models each; the whole set roared forward and surrounded the Murasames with a net of beam fire. The King DRAGOONs that had launched their smaller compatriots sent pulsing red blasts into the enemy's ranks, forcing them to break formation—only for the smaller DRAGOONs to sweep in and rip them apart with a wave of green beam fire.

Rau glanced upward, where another squadron of Windams was charging from above. He grinned back, ticked the Judgment back, and let loose a salvo of his own from the beam guns on the Judgment's shoulders, torso, and hips. The beams drove the Windams apart and picked two of them out of the sky—and then the DRAGOONs swarmed in to claim another two Windams.

The three survivors ducked away—only for the Judgment to lunge up before them. Two cannons folded out of its legs at the knees, and with two pulsing red blasts, the Windams were no more. The last survivor charged forward, beam rifle blazing.

"Ah, it's been so long since I've been able to fight like this!" Rau cackled—

And with a twisted shriek of torn metal, the Judgment lunged forward, a beam saber appearing in its left hand, and ripped the Windam in half at the waist.

Rau recalled his DRAGOONs with a smile. This machine would do nicely. Nicely indeed. The Judgment turned and roared back into the fight.

—

"This is _so totally bitchin'!_"

With a shuddering blast from the three unlucky Windams behind it, the Marduk Gundam spiraled up into the battle, its pilot laughing all the way. Four Windams up above leveled off their beam rifles and opened fire—only for the Marduk to effortlessly send their beams flying wide around the battlefield with a flash from the Geschmeidig Panzer armor in its shoulder shells. Auel cracked a grin as he swung the shells up and let fly a storm of beam fire that tore them all apart.

"This is the fucking most awesome thing I've ever done in my life!" Auel cried. "Holy shit! Best day _ever!_"

Another salvo of beam shots rained down around the remaining mobile suits. Four Murasames shot by, followed by the four gunbarrels of the Fujin Gundam in hot pursuit, each of their double-barreled beam guns blazing. The Murasames broke ranks and tried to flee; the gunbarrels pursued. One of them came arcing around towards the Marduk—only for the Fujin Gundam itself to drop into its path and blow it away with a beam rifle blast.

"Auel, there's a destroyer up there that's moving to flank Mina's fleet," Sting said. "You wanna go kill it?"

"Do I!" Auel exclaimed, and the Marduk rocketed away. Up above, a _Drake_-class destroyer was moving into position around a beleaguered _Laurasia_ frigate in Sahaku's dwindling fleet. Auel licked his lips and charged forward, towards its unprotected starboard flank.

Four Windams rose up to meet him with a wall of beam fire; Auel sent it flying with the Geschmeidig Panzer, but the Windams merely moved in closer.

"Fools," he said, "you can't stop me with _that!_"

The Marduk backed away and swung up its shoulder shells, and the two flaps on either side of the "Callidus Mk II" cannons opened up. The Windams backed away, appearing unsure of what the Marduk was about to do.

"That's right, kids!" Auel screamed. "_Say goodnight!_"

With a blinding flash of light, the Marduk sent forward two pulsing red beams. The Windams vanished in front of them, and the blasts plowed clear through the attacking _Drake_—and with that, the broken warship disappeared in a plume of fire.

Auel let out a satisfied breath. "God _damn_ has it been too long," he sighed, and scanned the battlefield for his next victim.

—

A beam shot drilled its way clear through the cockpit of an oncoming Windam and blew it apart. Its wing mates stopped short and scanned the battlefield for their attacker—and far away, standing on a piece of debris, the Kali Gundam cocked its sniper rifle to the side and blasted away the next Windam. The survivors darted away, but Stella smiled at her handiwork all the same and hopped off the wreckage. The Windams caught sight of her—

Instead, a beam blast from above took down another Windam, and the survivors looked up—to find the blue and off-white Zulfiqar Gundam floating above them. Its beam wings flashed to life, it drew a sword from its backpack and lit up the blade...and in the cockpit, Shinn Asuka smiled a little at the bolt of fear that went streaking through his enemies.

"That's right," he said, "_I'm back!_"

The Zulfiqar charged with a blaze of afterimages. The Windams broke formation and fired back, only for the Kali to remind them of its presence with a beam blast through one of their number. The Zulfiqar came down with a crash and chopped one of the Windams in two; another one slid in from behind, only for Shinn to whip around and slash it in half with his sword. A third ducked aside and leveled off its beam rifle—only for the Kali to lunge into its face and tear it apart with a backhanded beam saber blow. The two Gundams darted apart again as another wave of beam fire sliced between them.

Shinn glanced up at the source and caught sight of the vast hull of a _Nelson_-class warship storming forward, guns blazing. He glanced over at Stella; she nodded, and the two Gundams roared towards the approaching vessel. The Kali darted between the blasts and squeezed off shots from its rifle, blowing away machinegun turrets and missile tubes on the ship's hull. Shinn ducked through the shots with a cloud of afterimages around him and swept down onto the ship's dorsal side. The double-barreled beam cannon in front of the bridge ticked up towards him; he slammed the sword straight through it and ripped it in two, then whirled around again, drew the long-range cannon, and blasted the bridge tower away.

The Kali lunged up from behind the Zulfiqar and pumped beam blasts into the warship's exposed interior, slashing through the missile stores and the reactor, and the two Gundams darted away again as their prey burst apart in flames.

—

With afterimages rippling across the black sky of space, the Gundam Eclipse rushed forward towards a faltering squadron of Murasames. Emily swung down into their ranks with a flash and tore two of the machines in half with her beam sword. The survivors veered away from her, but one was too slow and the Eclipse embedded one of its anchors into its body, then yanked it closer and cut it in two.

Emily whipped around to deflect a flurry of blasts with her beam shield and then stormed forward towards the attackers overhead. They too tried to wave off at the last second, but the Eclipse rushed forward to saw them both apart with its beam wings, then dart up over the return fire from the surviving Murasames.

"They're panicking," Emily muttered, and swung around to face the charging mobile suits again. They opened fire; Emily rocketed over their blasts and angled the black Gundam towards its next target—the imposing hull of an off-white and gray _Izumo_-class battleship. Already the positron cannons on either side of the ship's engine block were gaining energy, and the whole thing was pointing towards _Ame-no-Mihashira_—and was yet unopposed.

Emily ground her teeth and charged forward, the Murasames still giving chase. The _Izumo_ threw up a wall of CIWS fire that bounced harmlessly off the Eclipse's Phase Shift armor. She glanced over her shoulder; the Murasames were still there—

And amid a cloud of flashing afterimages, she darted to the side just as the _Izumo_'s Gottfried cannon opened fire. The Murasames tried to pull up, but one was blown apart in the blast—and the second one shuddered as Emily slammed an anchor into its side, then whipped around and smashed the Murasame into the _Izumo_'s dorsal Gottfried cannon. The battleship bucked wildly under the blow; Emily flung her Gundam through the flames, swept down next to the ship, and slammed the Gundam's left hand into the positron cannon to deliver a palm cannon blast.

The broken battleship threw sparks and finally snapped in two amid a bone-rattling explosion. Emily backed away and scanned the black skies for her next target.

—

It was simply unbelievable.

The cockpit of Rondo Mina Sahaku's customized Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatu was silent as Mina herself stared in shock at the flailing fleet of Jona Roma Seiran. In a matter of minutes, the _Minerva_ had completely turned the tide of the battle.

No...the _Minerva_ and those _Gundams_ of theirs.

They moved like hunting birds descending on their prey. That firepower, that speed, that maneuverability...she glared down at the Earth. How could Malchio have assembled this kind of technology, while she was stuck up here on _Ame-no-Mihashira_, rotting and waiting for an opportunity that she might not even be armed enough to seize if it ever emerged?

A shriek from the Amatu's sensors brought her back to reality and she flung up the _Okitsu-no-Kagami_ beam shield unit to deflect a beam blast from an oncoming pair of Windams. They split up and showered her with beam fire from both flanks; the Amatu backed away behind its shield, then charged at the one on the right, somersaulted over its head, whipped around, and slammed both its back-mounted claws around the mobile suit's chest. The second Windam moved to flank the Amatu and open fire—only for Mina to whip around again and shove the captive Windam into the beam's blast. She kicked the broken machine towards its comrade to let it explode—and as the Windam reeled, she burst through the smoke and rammed forward the _Okitsu-no-Kagami_'s beam blade straight into the second Windam's cockpit and destroyed it.

Mina backed away with a sigh and looked over the battlefield. Perhaps this wasn't so bad, really. One battleship and eight high performance mobile suits were in position to make her ambitions a great deal easier than they'd ever been before.

"Lady Sahaku," a voice spoke up, and Mina glanced over the portly captain of her own ship, the _Izumo_, "we've intercepted a transmission from the Seiran fleet. They're retreating."

Mina smiled. "Excellent. Direct our friends to an open bay aboard _Ame-no-Mihashira_. We have introductions to make."

—

_**Izumo**_**-class battleship **_**Amaterasu**_

Jona Roma Seiran trembled with rage as the _Amaterasu_ raced away from the battlefield with what remained of its allies. Eight ships, this little debacle of an assault had cost him, including two of his precious _Izumo_-class battleships. Forty percent of his mobile suits destroyed. The carrier _Itsukushima_ obliterated by a single positron cannon blast. The _Minerva_ had screwed him over again.

"Contact made with Arzachel, sir," Matsumara spoke up. "They've agreed to send us reinforcements. Vice Admiral Mathis is already on his way."

"Very well." He looked back out towards space, at the wreckage of his fleet and the glimmering dot of _Ame-no-Mihashira_ in the distance. He was on the cusp of wiping out the last challenger to his throne—and yet here they had to show up, with new Gundams, to wreck everything. He needed no Newtype senses to know his men were reeling from the counterattack.

The _Amaterasu_ rattled as one of its mobile suits returned—the Akatsuki, most likely. Mara would most likely have some choice words for him for his decision to retreat, but he'd really had no choice. At least this way they could reinforce and come up with a better plan of attack to deal with those damned Gundams.

He scowled at the faraway station. No doubt Rondo Mina Sahaku was exultant with this unexpected victory. But she would not be so for long.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"Well," said Valentine Sunogachi with a start, "that was unexpected."

The video before them looped back on itself on the holographic screens of Messiah's vast control room. At Valentine's side, Kira Yamato cringed at the images of what looked like new Justice and Destiny Gundams tearing effortlessly through the Alliance forces. The Vega Freedom Gundam had outmatched them before, but this would be trickier.

"And the _Minerva_ docked at _Ame-no-Mihashira_, you say?" Valentine asked skeptically.

The officer in front of them nodded. "They escaped Gigafloat just minutes before it exploded. And," he withdrew his tablet from under his arm, "intel just picked up an Alliance fleet setting out from Arzachel. Their trajectory points them towards _Ame-no-Mihashira_."

Valentine frowned at the screen, then looked over at Kira. At her unspoken prompting, he dug back into his memories of Orb.

"The Sahaku family controls _Ame-no-Mihashira_," he explained. "It was supposed to be an orbital elevator, but the rival Seiran family took over after the Valentine War and held up construction to cripple the Sahakus. So this might just be Orb internal feuding using Alliance military hardware."

Valentine stared off thoughtfully in the direction of the orbital platform, and Kira took the opportunity to look back at the footage of those new Gundams. The new Justice, with those claws and that enormous speed, and the new Destiny, that seemed upgraded in every way...the dragons he would have to slay. They would stand between him and destiny. He knew it. He—and the Vega Freedom—would simply have to be better.

It would do well enough in battle, he supposed. As long as he could separate them and deal with them both individually, he could do it. And he would have to, because no doubt they would try to stand against the ZAFT fleet, against Messiah, against the Goliath, as it descended to Earth to do its bloody work. It was...what he would have done.

Kira shook his head and swallowed the knot of horror welling up in his throat. Kira Yamato of six years ago would be standing against the ZAKU Goliath, but Kira Yamato of six years ago was dead—and in his place stood a man who would burn heaven and hell to the ground to make the world change.

And if the Goliath couldn't change the world, then there wouldn't be a world left to change.

—

An eerie silence hung over the observation deck overlooking the dock where the _Fortuna_ was being prepared for its next sortie. It had been quiet of late aboard Kira Yamato's flagship, as the ZAFT fleet switched from attacking civilian targets to fending off the encroaching Alliance forces. The Alliance Space Fleet had grown since they had last met—in size and in strength.

That made it all just more exhausting for Kara Guinness, because it meant they were beginning to lose the initiative. Few things were more frustrating than the thought that they had come all this way back to the Earth Sphere just to lose.

She glanced over to the side, where Juarez Recardo was staring down at the _Fortuna_ with crossed arms.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Juarez shrugged. "What's always wrong," he said. "You saw it, didn't you?"

"Saw what?"

"The Goliath."

So that was the problem. Kara arched an eyebrow. "What about it?"

"Well, you know what they're going to do with it. They're going to send it to Earth and have it wipe out cities and stuff."

Kara frowned. "So—"

"So," Juarez cut her off, "I'm not sure I'm cool with that."

It was this argument again, the same one they'd been having off and on for the past month. And Kara suspected he was winning, because even her own lust for revenge was beginning to dim as the realities of war set in. Perhaps he'd been right and they really should have stayed at Mars...

...or perhaps not. "The Resistance is about to lose the war, y'know," she said. "We need all the advantages we can get."

"But killing innocent people isn't an advantage for us. It's just...y'know, evil."

Kara crossed her arms and silenced the part of her that was starting to agree. "If the Naturals didn't want a war like this," she said, "they shouldn't have let it come to this in the first place."

Juarez waved a hand at the Earth. "You know, the fact that there _is_ a Resistance that's been dedicating resources to protecting Coordinators from Blue Cosmos kind of puts the lie to the belief that they were all somehow responsible for the Requiem. It's not like they haven't suffered too. So when we send the Goliath to Earth, we'll be punishing the wrong people."

Silence enveloped them again, and Kara glanced furtively at the blue planet below. So many people down there, and so many of them would know what hell the Coordinators had known...and again, Kara had to push down the part of her that wondered if they really needed to know.

—

_**Ame-no-Mihashira**_**, Earth orbit**

Sitting across the table from the imperious Rondo Mina Sahaku, Meyrin Hawke felt the two emotions of intimidation and disgust dueling for primacy in her heart at the sight of the elegant and mysterious scion of the Sahaku family. She was on Mina's turf this time—all in the Resistance knew that _Ame-no-Mihashira_ was the dark castle in which they were all better off not setting foot if they could at all get away with it. And yet the only other stronghold in space for the Resistance now was Terminal, and they were too far away.

And...well, Malchio had given his word to her that the _Minerva_ would assist them. And Meyrin would not let him down.

"Nobody is going anywhere until Jona's fleet is dealt with," Mina said firmly. "I'm sure you understand, Captain Hawke."

"Of course," Meyrin answered. "Will we have free use of the facilities?"

Mina arched an eyebrow. "Do you doubt my hospitality, captain?"

At Meyrin's side, Abbey clenched her fists. Meyrin shot her a quick glance. "Of course not, Lady Sahaku," she said. "But we have other missions we need to carry out in space, so we can't stay here indefinitely."

Mina tilted her head back. "Very well. But as I said, nobody is going anywhere until Jona is disposed of."

The _Minerva_'s captain and vice captain shared a look. Even when Rondo Mina Sahaku asked them for a favor, she made it feel like the other way around.

—

Even after all these years, Shinn Asuka still felt his stomach turn at the subject of Orb.

This wasn't the Orb of Uzumi Nala Athha, either. Uzumi's Orb had been a technocratic but ultimately too idealistic place, where the Atlantic Federation wouldn't value the Kaguya mass driver enough to pick a fight over it and the war was something that happened to other people. It had been a place of illusion, from the gaudy spectacles of its polished and tightly designed cities to the madness of its foreign policy. And that had all wound up getting his parents killed. The anger might have faded, but forgiveness was still to come.

But this place, Rondo Mina Sahaku's August Pillar of Heaven, was something else entirely. This was the symbol of an entirely different kind of Orb. Growing up, the distant and imperious Sahakus had always been the family that most closely controlled Orb's military. They had been the ones to transform _Ame-no-Mihashira_ into a space fortress as the Valentine War began, and as Lowe had explained once, it was their glory-crazed scion Ghina who had tried to ensure Orb's dominance by eliminating competitors in the mass driver business.

Thinking of Gigafloat let him to think of Malchio, and that brought a pang of sadness to his heart. Once again, Orb found a way to hurt him.

Shinn drifted in front of his silent new Zulfiqar Gundam in the _Minerva_'s hangar, as the mechanics looked it over after its first battle and cooed appreciatively at the Gundam's innards. He certainly wasn't going to risk setting foot on a Sahaku's turf. Gai had disposed of Ghina years ago and left the Sahaku family in the hands of his much more cunning and patient sister, but she was still of Orb—and Shinn wasn't yet ready to deal with Orb again.

—

"Had fun out there, I take it?" grumbled Trojan Noiret as he drifted through the hallways of _Ame-no-Mihashira_. At his side, Emily merely shrugged and looked around anxiously. The ubiquitous blue-gray and black uniforms of the old Orb military and the cold stares of their wearers were putting her on edge. At Terminal the worst the crew had done was ignore her; here, in the mysterious citadel of someone she wasn't sure the Resistance truly counted as an ally, she felt something far worse.

"Lowe said he was building a new machine for you either way," she said. "You just have to be patient."

Trojan frowned. "Easy for you to say."

Emily put it out of her mind as they rounded a corner and emerged into an observation corridor stretching over one of the station's many cavernous hangars. Down below, amid a small army of M1 Astrays and Murasames, stood a dozen Raider Gundam Full Spec units and a Sword Calamity in garish blues and reds. Emily frowned at the sight of the mobile suits as she came to a stop against the railing.

"Lady Sahaku sure has a lot of those things," she mumbled. "I thought Ed was the only one with a Sword Calamity."

"The Alliance built three during the Valentine War," Trojan explained. "Ed took one. Rena Imelia took another. And they gave the third one to the Sahakus. They built a few more after the war, but that one," he gestured at the bulky mobile suit, "is an original."

Emily studied the silent machine for a moment. The Sword Calamity was a machine that required a special kind of pilot—and Emily _had_ been feeling the warped presence of clones on this station.

"So," she said uneasily, "what other dirty little secrets does Lady Sahaku have around here?"

The look in Trojan's eyes made her regret asking. "You don't want to know the things I've heard about this place," he said, and together they headed back down the corridor.

—

It was almost a strange feeling of kinship that went coursing through Lily Thevalley's blood as she and Stella stared in open disbelief at the sight before her. Standing on the deck in matching blue and white Orb flight suits were four identical faces, all with the same light blue hair and lightless gray eyes. A fifth one stood off to the side in an Orb uniform. An officer waved at the mobile suits behind them, and the four clones saluted in unnaturally perfect sync and then pushed off towards the machines.

"Who are they...?" Lily started, and the fifth clone turned around with a blank expression.

"_Minerva_ pilot," he said, and Lily blinked at the bizarre way he said even that. "We have not been introduced. I am Four Socius." He offered a short bow.

Stella frowned. "Four?"

"I am the fourth clone produced in the Socius series."

Lily's stomach turned and she glanced awkwardly at Stella—and even Stella looked a little put off. "You're a clone?" Lily asked.

"Yes."

The two Extended both shared another look. Lily had always heard rumors of creepy things going on at _Ame-no-Mihashira_, but that feeling that she was looking at someone like her still squirmed inside her soul.

—

A contented sigh drifted through the _Minerva_'s internal observation deck as Viveka came to a stop against the railing. The last time she'd been in combat was that battle in Terminal—all the way back in late April. And between injuries and a lack of mobile suits to go around, she had spent the rest of her time rotting on the _Minerva_.

Well, not exactly rotting. She glanced over her shoulder as Athrun made his way onto the deck. There had been _some_ positive developments.

Athrun landed next to her with a satisfied look on his face. "Those new Gundams did better than I expected."

"Oh, yeah, totally bitchin'," Viveka agreed, and paused for a quick kiss. "So was it just me or did I see a golden mobile suit out there?"

"No, you did," Athrun said, the look of satisfaction fading. "I guess I didn't destroy it enough at Orb."

Viveka frowned. "Is it gonna be a problem?"

"No."

"N-No? Really?"

Athrun shrugged. "I told you. Cagalli's dead. And I destroyed that mobile suit once already." He looked out the observation deck windows, out over the _Minerva_'s prow, out into space. "I'll just have to be more thorough this time." He paused. "But there is _one_ little loose end I have to tie up as long as we're here..."

"What?"

He gestured out towards space. "The man leading that fleet. He was Orb's _de facto_ leader while I was with the Orb Raiders. He hunted us down trying to force Cagalli into a political marriage with him. So as long as we're here and he's the guy on the other side of the battlefield..."

Viveka grinned. "I see."

—

Roxy Bannon victoriously lifted a bottle of something into the air. "To kicking ass and taking names!"

On the other side of the table in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge, Sting and Auel—particularly Auel—both looked hesitantly at their own bottles, then nervously followed suit and downed the whole thing. Sting managed to swallow it all without coughing, but Auel let out one little sputter. Nonetheless, Roxy looked pleased. Their training in the ways of imbibing appeared to be going well.

"So," she said, "how were the new Gundams?"

Auel stared into his empty glass and shrugged. "Other than completely fucking awesome?"

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't say that too loud if I were you," Sting said. "I saw the way the mechanics at this place were eyeing our new hardware. Not sure I like it."

Roxy blinked. "Oh, yeah, _them,_" she said. "Bunch of bastards."

"What, why?" asked Auel. Roxy poured herself another drink.

"Okay, you know how Orb's internal politics used to work, right? Nice normal elected government balanced with five noble families?" Two nods of understanding followed. "Well, Rondo Mina Sahaku is the head of one of those families. Jona Roma Seiran, better known for his day job as the Governor-General, is the head of another. The others, they're all dead. But Mina's been up here conspiring to take over Orb herself for a long time," she shivered, "and in the course of all that scheming, she's gone to some...unsettling lengths, we'll say."

Sting arched an eyebrow. "Unsettling, how?"

"I'll put it this way," Roxy said. "If you see a guy with sky-blue hair and gray eyes walking around, don't be surprised if you see him turn up in a lot of other places. Like there's more than one of him or something. 'cuz, well," she shrugged, "there is."

Sting and Auel glanced between each other. "She's cloning people?"

"She's got cloned Combat Coordinators up here, and more than that," Roxy finished, "and if you aren't careful, she's going to add to her collection."

—

_Ame-no-Mihashira_'s master observation gallery was silent but for the conversation of two figures striding along the windows and their spectacular view of the Earth and space.

Mina cast a furtive glance at her companion. That mask made it impossible to decipher Rau Le Creuset's emotions. Mina hated that. It meant he could hide something, something very important—and Rondo Mina Sahaku _hated_ having things hidden from her.

"Potential, yes," agreed Rau, "but potential is nothing without proper guidance. Poor little Emily has the unenviable position of having been blessed with enormous talent and sharply-honed skills, but never was she given a purpose for which to employ them."

"Yes, that's a curious thing about her," Mina said. "I always took the Angel of Death to be a more fearsome and driven figure than that little girl down on your ship."

Rau smiled. "Lady Sahaku, you sell her short. There is plenty of passion and drive within her. Fate simply hasn't tried the right keys yet."

"Yet?"

"Indeed."

Mina frowned and glanced out the windows, over the blue planet below. "I must admit, I'm curious as to what she could do if she had purpose." She paused. "A master, if you will. A guiding hand to steer her in the right direction."

Rau's smile remained. "So am I."

"But I don't suppose she'll leave the _Minerva_..."

"Oh, heavens, no. Not with her sister and her friends still there." He came to a stop in front of Mina with a dramatic swirl of his coat. "No, Lady Sahaku, I'm afraid you'll have to content yourself with watching from afar. Emily is, after all, her own person."

Mina looked away in annoyance. "I suppose."

"And if I may say so," Rau added, "I most certainly believe that her destiny will take her to far grander places than the halls of power in Orb." He gestured towards the Earth. "After all, there's always business for the Angel of Death."

Mina glanced back towards the masked man and tried to hide her shudder.

—

**June 18th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Agamemnon**_**-class carrier **_**Henry Clay**_

"Of course, Governor Seiran," said Vice Admiral Kevin Mathis in as soothing a voice as he could muster. "I have twenty warships and two hundred mobile suits with me. And you've already inflicted significant damage on the defenses at _Ame-no-Mihashira_."

"Be that as it may," Jona Roma Seiran said, his irritated face flickering on the auxiliary screen, "I don't want to take chances."

Mathis arched an eyebrow. "Are you doubting my men, governor?"

"Not at all, admiral. It's simply as I said. I don't want to take chances."

Silence reigned between the two men for a moment, before Mathis raised a hand. "Well, two things should set your mind at ease, then," he said, and the first of those things drifted up next to the admiral's chair. "I assume you know of the Moonlight Mad Dog, Captain Morgan Chevalier?"

Morgan crossed his arms and stared skeptically at the screen. "By reputation," Jona said uncertainly.

"And the other thing," Mathis said, with a nod to Morgan. "I've been in touch with Daedalus Crater. The Phantom Pain and Lord Djibril want to get this sideshow at _Ame-no-Mihashira_ over with as quickly as possible. Once our fleets rendezvous, I'll head over to your flagship for a face-to-face meeting, and we'll go over our plan." He smiled. "It has some parts I think you'll like."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_**, Habilis mass driver, South African Union**

The sun dawned bright and relentless over the mighty Habilis mass driver, the light glittering on the blue surface of Lake Victoria. It was a picturesque sight, really, and Ivan Danilov felt a little bad for the local wildlife that he was about to go ruining their morning with a liftoff.

He sat back into the chair as his crew went over the final launch procedures. For all the preparations, their orders were simply to fly to the Moon and dock at Althea Crater. And that was what made his gut churn.

Althea Crater, he knew well, was where the Earth Alliance manufactured its Extended. And "manufactured" was really the best word to describe the process. He had seen firsthand the kind of training and modification that went into the Extended and the images still never failed to disturb him.

Alliance High Command wanted him at Althea as part of a vast strategic feint to trick ZAFT into moving a portion of its fleet towards the lunar base. Then the _Charlemagne_ would oversee the deployment of gargantuan weapons like the Destroy Gundams to wipe out the ZAFT forces. With the ZAFT fleet out of action, the path would be clear for the Alliance Space Force to converge on Lagrange Point 5, fight its way through the shoal zone, wipe out Messiah, and finish off the Coordinators once and for all.

There was such a chilling finality to it all. _Ame-no-Mihashira_ was about to be destroyed as well. Soon only Terminal would be left to stand against the Alliance in space, and after that...

Danilov sat back and decided to think about that later. After all, there was a launch to supervise.

—

Sven Cal Bayan had hoped the rattling launch of the _Charlemagne_ would shake the ship enough to dislodge the insistent voice of his younger self and the echoing words of Yukiko Nakajima from his mind. They had both been harrying him ever since the _Charlemagne_ had left the latter at Socotra and traveled to the Victoria base.

"_You're going to have to put aside everything to maximize the unit's potential,_" she had said. "_The Psyco System will work best if you surrender your mind completely to it. Don't resist it at all._"

And yet if he did that, he'd be wide open for the psychic depredations of his great foe.

_The self-sacrificial thing doesn't really suit you,_ the child piped up. _It's not like you're sacrificing yourself for something noble. You just don't want to die._

_Shut up,_ he shot back.

This was how it had been ever since that battle at Gigafloat. The voice in the back of his mind endlessly taunting him, Yukiko forever prodding him towards the edge of the abyss, and worst of all, that miserable feeling that the little kid was probably right. They were returning to space. He would be able to see the stars, uninhibited by the Earth's atmosphere and the polluting lights of the planet. He would be on the doorway of his oldest dreams.

But he was not that little boy anymore, and that was the one thing his sprightly younger self didn't understand. Sven Cal Bayan had ceased to exist a long time ago. He knew he still wanted to reach out, leave this forsaken world behind, and go off into the universe in search of something newer and better—or _whatever_ was out there. But that would not happen. The Phantom Pain was his life now, and without its comforting routines and demands, he would scarcely know what to do with himself.

The little boy didn't understand that his battle was already lost. And Yukiko didn't understand that if he let himself go into the Psyco System, he would lose the last defenses that would keep out Shinn Asuka—another man who wouldn't understand.

Nobody would understand. They never did. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the shaking as the _Charlemagne_ rocketed into space.

—

**Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Grand Admiral James MacIntyre felt like a very, very small man.

It was not easy to make the admiral feel this way, and it had never happened before in the presence of this man, but MacIntyre felt it still as he fidgeted with his cane in the darkness of a dingy apartment on the impoverished eastern side of Washington, D.C. He felt out of place as it was, having eschewed his glorious white uniform for the least conspicuous civilian clothes he could manage, but it was something about the dominating figure of Joseph Copland that made him feel insignificant in comparison. Whatever had happened to the former President of the Atlantic Federation must have been amazing.

Copland leaned forward. "Every one of my subordinates is going to ask me this question, James," he said. MacIntyre's eyes darted towards the steel-faced woman standing over Copland's shoulder, arms crossed, one of her hands clutching a pistol. "Between the two, we have a greater moral imperative to fight ZAFT than the Alliance."

MacIntyre swallowed the feelings. "Yes," he said, "which is what makes this such a risky endeavor."

"But they're going to want more," Copland said. "And this scheme of yours won't work if I have to go blabbing it to every soul in the Resistance who asks."

"No, it won't," MacIntyre nodded, "which is why you're going to have to be the leader that you say you are, and convince them that the Resistance simply has to attack Althea Crater."

Copland hung his head. "I still can't believe you're doing this, James."

"Times change. The Earth Alliance is about to destroy the Resistance, and once it has, it will destroy ZAFT, and then what force will there be to impose change for the better?" He swept an arm out. "I don't need to tell you this, Joseph, but you know the politicians in Washington won't force an improvement. They'll go along with Djibril in the end, because Djibril is the one with the power. But we finally have a chance to knock _both_ of these evil forces out of the world, and we have to take it before it goes away."

"And you think the world will rally around Meyers once he shows all of Djibril's evil secrets from Althea?" Copland asked.

"It won't," MacIntyre said. "In my opinion, Schtorzmann and Manuel will stick with him to the end. But Djibril can't survive losing the Atlantic Federation _and_ the Republic of East Asia. And he can't bring them both to heel while simultaneously keeping his grip on power in Eurasia and South Africa, _and_ while destroying the Resistance _and_ ZAFT."

"Then you're starting a civil war."

"If our plan goes right and we destroy Djibril and the Phantom Pain first, then there won't _be_ one—but this plan only works if the Resistance fills in the gaps." He leaned forward. "I know I'm asking the world of you, Joseph, but if this doesn't work, there won't be a world _left_ for you."

Copland studied MacIntyre's old, leathery face for a moment and then sighed. "I know, James," he said. "I will do my part. But the risks in this game..."

"I'll put it this way for you, then," MacIntyre said gravely. "Whatever world we create from our actions here can't possibly be worse than the world Djibril will create."

"Or the world Sunogachi will create."

"Exactly."

Copland sat up. "Then we have a lot to do."

—

**June 19th, CE 77 - **_**Izumo**_**-class battleship **_**Amaterasu**_**, orbit of Earth**

The _Amaterasu_ rumbled as its engines came to life and the bow edged towards the distant form of _Ame-no-Mihashira_. In the observer's chair, Jona Roma Seiran sat back with a scowl. So his victory last time had been stolen by the _Minerva_. Fine. Now he had reinforcements—and a trump card.

He scowled at the thought. Having to go begging to the Alliance Space Force for help because the big bad _Minerva_ had torn his fleet apart...well, he would answer that humiliation here. Rondo Mina Sahaku would never bother him again.

"Governor," Matsumara spoke up from the captain's chair, "all our ships are in position, and Admiral Mathis is reporting the same."

"Very good," Jona said, and leaned forward in anticipation. "Launch our mobile suits. Target: _Ame-no-Mihashira_. Begin the attack."

—

To be continued...


	37. Phase 37: Second Chances

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 37 - Second Chances

—

**June 19th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, near **_**Ame-no-Mihashira**_**, Earth orbit**

Far ahead lay the combined forces of the Orb Space Fleet and their Earth Alliance reinforcements. To the rear were the six surviving ships of _Ame-no-Mihashira_'s modest fleet, its full complement of surviving mobile suits, and the station itself.

In between them, the _Minerva_ and its Gundams. On the bridge, Meyrin steeled herself. It had been so long since she had been on the offensive, she had almost forgotten how to take it—but she had given Malchio her word.

"The enemy fleet's mobile suits are accelerating to attack speed," Burt reported. "Captain...?"

"It's time," Meyrin said. "All hands, move out!"

—

With a shuddering blast, the Zulfiqar Gundam sawed its way through another Windam and darted forward, letting afterimages flicker across the sky and draw the enemy's fire. The squad of Windams up ahead backed away, just as the Zulfiqar slammed into their ranks and tore them apart with a flurry of sword strokes.

Shinn blinked in surprise at the familiar feeling of danger and flung himself back—just as a wave of red beam fire lanced down from above.

"Ah yes, you," he said, "it wouldn't be a party if one of you guys didn't show up."

The bulky body of a Zamzazar mobile armor flashed its eyes and snapped its claws combatively. Shinn glanced over his shoulder.

"Stella, we haven't taken on one of these things in the new Gundams. Wanna give it a whirl?"

The Kali Gundam came down next to the Zulfiqar and hefted its sniper rifle. "Those things are _never_ scary."

"Damn right they're not. Let's go!"

The two Gundams rocketed apart. The Zamzazar backed away and hurled a wave of beam fire after them; Shinn dove through the blasts with a blaze of afterimages, then closed in with a downward sword hack. The Zamzazar pushed itself forward and flung up its left-hand claw to catch the blade; Shinn darted aside as the Kali lunged into the fight with a salvo from its rifle. The hulking mobile armor shrugged off the blow; Shinn pounded it with a blast from his long-range cannon, but the positron reflector deflected the blow and the Zamzazar charged ahead anyway with a furious swipe of its claws.

"Still good for a fight, I guess," Shinn grunted. "Stella, get around it!"

—

"Well, well, well," giggled Mara Saraba as the Akatsuki turned towards its oncoming foes, "I guess Jona is right to believe in second chances."

Inside the humming Celestial Justice Gundam, Athrun glowered back at the blonde-haired woman who had hijacked Cagalli's legacy. "Second chances, huh?"

Viveka blinked. "You want help with this one?"

"Just back me up," he said. "I have some unfinished business to attend to."

"Oh, don't think you'll get away with _that!_" Mara laughed. "All units, _attack_—"

The Aurora Gundam blasted forward with a salvo of beam fire, and two of the Windams behind the Akatsuki vanished in a blaze of fire. The rest broke ranks and scattered as the Aurora poured firepower after them.

"Sorry, Blondie," Viveka said with a grin, "but if he wants to rip you a new asshole personally, I ain't gettin' in his way."

Athrun charged forward with a beam salvo that drove the Akatsuki back. Mara snarled in frustration and launched the remote turrets, spinning a web of beam fire around the charging Justice—but Athrun easily wove his way through the blasts and came in close, eschewing the rifle for a double-ended beam saber. Mara backed away and flung up her shield to deflect the blow—only for the left-hand claw on the Justice's subflight lifter to lash out and rip the Akatsuki's beam rifle from its hand.

"And this time," Athrun snarled, "you _won't_ come _back!_"

—

Rau Le Creuset grimaced as he guided the Judgment Gundam into battle, with the Fujin and Marduk Gundams on his flanks. Heavy firepower and darting DRAGOONs would make for a formidable anti-fleet weapon, but the farther away he was from _Ame-no-Mihashira_, the less of a chance he had to tie up another loose end—a loose end that could cause unwelcome complications if not snipped off while the opportunity was still there.

He returned his attention to the matter at hand. Sniveling little scions nosing around where they shouldn't were still less urgent than the wall of beam fire heading straight towards him. He deflected the blasts with the beam shield, just before the Marduk ducked in with its Geschmeidig Panzer armor to send the blasts scattering back towards the Alliance fleet.

"Open fire from long range," Rau said. "They'll have to break formation to evade and they'll be vulnerable."

"Or they'll be stupid," Auel grumbled, but the Fujin and Marduk charged forward anyway, the Marduk providing the shield for the Fujin. The two Gundams darted apart to let the Judgment open fire with its beam guns, and Rau sent the King DRAGOONs forward to fire off the Pawn DRAGOONs and launch a web of beam fire towards the Alliance warships.

The Marduk's eyes flashed and it lined up a blast with its Callidus Mk II cannons—but the shots slammed against not a warship, but the telltale shimmering barrier of a positron reflector. A trio of _Drake_-class destroyers drove forward, the rest of the fleet falling into place behind it.

"Oh, no fair," Auel sneered.

"They've never done _that_ before," added Sting with a shrug.

Rau frowned. "Clever," he muttered. "Auel, Sting, we are changing plans. Engage the enemy ships at point-blank range. The positron reflectors can't protect them there."

"If you say so," Sting grunted, and the Fujin charged ahead with its gunbarrels taking off around it.

Before plunging into battle, Rau cast a furtive glance off in the direction of Emily's flickering pressure. There was another, much fainter presence there too...but perhaps fortune would intervene yet.

—

The Long Dagger swung up its beam rifle and opened fire, but where the Long Dagger and its heavy Fortrestra armor had firepower and defense, the Windams had speed—and as they darted around the Dagger's blasts, they showed its superiority by lancing around the Dagger's defenses and blowing it out of the sky with a wave of beam rifle blasts.

The Windams themselves backed away, just in time for two of them to be slashed in half by the charging Gundam Eclipse. Emily whirled around towards the survivors—only for one of them to lurch forward, as though struck by something. A spike burst up from the Windam's cockpit; Rondo Mina Sahaku's custom Gold Frame Amatu materialized behind the stricken mobile suit, claws clamped onto its sides. It whirled around and flung the ruined mobile suit at its comrades. They backed away as it exploded—just in time for the Amatu to shower them with beam fire, and for the Eclipse to dive in and slash them both in half.

Mina glowered at the wreckage of the Long Dagger. Those Socius clones had been expensive to procure, more expensive to multiply, and even _more_ expensive to modify—and for what? Perhaps she should have sold these old machines while she'd had the chance.

But here was a nice new template, and one that might serve her far better than the brooding shades of that old ZAFT ace, Goud Veia. In the Gundam Eclipse, Emily glanced at the black and gold mobile suit in confusion.

"We shouldn't be stopping like this," she warned.

Mina gestured over her shoulder as the rest of her Socius clones arrived. The garishly colored Sword Calamity drifted down next to the Amatu. "There you are," she said. "Miss Oldendorf, we'd be honored if you'd join us in a counterattack on Governor Seiran's flagship."

"Um, okay," Emily started—

A wave of beam fire lanced out of nowhere, and a familiar pressure sliced across Emily's consciousness—as an equally familiar voice rang out in her cockpit.

"I'm afraid I'll have to cancel _that_ little date!" roared Morgan Chevalier, and his sleek mobile suit Fenrir spiraled into the battle with a squadron of Windams on its tail—and with two blue Exus mobile armors on its flanks. "And what better opportunity to revive an old tradition, too! Endymion Team, _attack!_"

Emily's eyes went wide as she caught the large orange backpacks on the Windams—and then the way they each launched gunbarrels and swarmed after Mina and her Socius clones. And from each of those cockpits was a certain, unmistakable pressure—

She whipped around, beam sword blazing to life, and ducked away from the Fenrir's gunbarrel beam blasts. The two Exus units split up to shower her from afar with more beam fire, and they too launched their gunbarrels to send a total of twelve of the things darting around the battlefield. The Fenrir itself charged in with a beam saber in hand; Emily jammed her own blade forward to deflect its blow.

"It's a regular ace reunion here!" Morgan laughed. "Emily! What are you doing with this old witch? I'm rather surprised!"

The Amatu barreled into the fight with a slash from its beam saber; the Fenrir backed away behind a protective screen of gunbarrel blasts. "Moonlight Mad Dog," Mina snarled, and the Amatu took off after its foe with a roar of thrusters. "That's such a fitting name for you! Always chasing whatever your masters want!"

Morgan ducked down beneath the Amatu's furious blade swipes and forced it back on the defensive with a wave of beam fire. "I'm just doing my job, lady," he shot back. "Besides, I've got a fight to settle with little miss Angel of Death over here, so if you'd kindly butt out—"

"I think I get a say here too!" Emily cried, and with a crash she slammed her sword down onto the Fenrir's saber and sent Morgan's mobile suit reeling.

The Amatu dropped down with a flash from the blade mounted on its Trikeros shield; Morgan threw the Fenrir to the side and slammed it in the side of the head with a lightning-fast kick. Emily charged forward, intent on intervening—but the two blue Exus units flashed by in front of her and sent her staggering back behind a wall of beam fire.

"Well, if Lady Sahaku here will only let me fight you over her dead body, then I guess I have no choice but to oblige," Morgan said with a smirk. "But don't _you_ go anywhere, kid. We've got business to finish!"

Emily scowled back at the Exus units as they wheeled around for another pass. The Fenrir rocketed off after the Amatu, and Emily returned her attention to the mobile armors and their charging gunbarrels.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Agamemnon**_**-class carrier **_**Henry Clay**_

"Daedalus Crater, this is Admiral Mathis," the admiral spoke on the quaking bridge of the _Henry Clay._ "We're taking heavy losses. What's the status of the Requiem?"

A deckhand on the other end adjusted his black Phantom Pain uniform. "Charging is still at eighty-one percent," he answered. "You'll need to wait for approximately twenty-eight more minutes."

Mathis cringed. Holding out another half an hour against this unstoppable team of Gundams... "What about the relay points?"

"Those are in position. You're advised to begin changing your fleet's formation, sir."

"Very well. _Clay_, out." The screen went dark and Mathis pinched the bridge of his nose, irritation swelling in him. How in hell had the Resistance managed to build mobile suits that so grossly outclassed their foes? What had gone wrong?

The auxiliary screen flickered to life with Jona Roma Seiran's furious visage. "Admiral, where are your friends in the Phantom Pain? We're getting torn apart!"

"Twenty-eight minutes, governor," Mathis growled. "Begin redeploying your fleet. We will end this battle in one blow; all we have to do is hold the enemy off until then."

Jona scowled, but said nothing as the screen clicked off.

"All hands, assume Defensive Pattern Armadillo," Mathis ordered. "Concentrate your fire on the _Minerva!_"

—

The Celestial Justice rattled as the Akatsuki's flashing remote turrets showered it with beam fire—but Athrun expertly wove his way through the blasts for another savage swordfight with the Akatsuki's shimmering beam saber. The golden mobile suit flung itself to the side to dodge a sweeping saber blow from the Justice's saber; Athrun whipped around, beam shield blazing to life, as he deflected the turrets' fire.

"Quite a fancy number you've got there," Mara snarled, as the turrets came around again and the Justice dove through their fire. The Akatsuki stabbed its saber forward; Athrun smacked it aside and sent the right-hand claw lancing forward to rip the Akatsuki's shield off its arm. Mara hissed a curse as she drew the Akatsuki's second beam saber and lit it up—only for the Justice to streak in close and send her reeling under a hail of blows from its own double-ended saber.

"I think you owe that machine more respect," Athrun shot back. "After who piloted it."

The Akatsuki backed away behind a hail of turret fire. "Cagalli? That dumb little girl who thought she could will a revolution into existence?"

With a heavy crash, the Justice brought its saber down and sent the Akatsuki staggering back. "And she was _still_ a far better person than _you!_" The Justice charged. "Just a petty little usurper!"

Mara grunted in pain as the Justice sent her reeling again. The turrets swarmed into the Justice's path—but with a flick of his Gundam's wrist, Athrun ducked between their fire and slashed one of them in half with his beam saber.

"You bastard," she snarled, and the Akatsuki charged again—

Athrun flung the Justice downward and its subflight lifter rocketed off its back. The turrets turned their fire towards it—only for the main body of the Justice to duck beneath the Akatsuki's saber and then lunge upward to slash off its left arm at the elbow. Mara jammed back the controls just in time to bring her remaining saber around and deflect the Justice's follow-up attack—and up above, the Fatum-02 wove its way through the Akatsuki's turret fire and ripped two of them out of the sky with a blazing volley of beam shots.

"As obnoxious as you are, you're not my _real_ target here," Athrun said with a scowl, "so let's just get this over with."

Mara blinked. "Wha—what are you—"

She said no more as the Fatum-02 lanced up behind her and used its claws to tear the _Shiranui_ pack clear off the Akatsuki's body. The beam turrets went silent—and with a shout, Athrun surged forward, flung the Akatsuki's saber aside, and plunged the second blade into the golden mobile suit's chest.

"After all," Athrun said, as Mara stared in horror at the Akatsuki's dying controls, "I have business with Jona."

The Akatsuki vanished in a blaze. Athrun reclaimed his subflight lifter with a crash and scanned the battlefield. Viveka was off somewhere tearing apart the regular forces—so he would have to find her before he could go hunt down Jona.

But the black and red _Amaterasu_ was out there. He could see it—and it would not be there for long.

—

A pulsing wave of beam fire coursed by the nimble Fujin Gundam as Sting pressed his attack. A Windam came down from overhead with a beam blast; the Fujin jetted to the side, then whirled around and slashed it in half with a kick from the Gundam's left-hand foot-mounted beam claw.

Sting glanced up over his shoulder. One of those _Drake_ destroyers with the positron reflector was up above, deflecting fire from the _Minerva_ on the Alliance fleet. Well, that wagon could be fixed easily enough.

With a blast of thruster exhaust, the Fujin rocketed off towards the ship. Two Windams moved to intercept, only to be torn apart by the Fujin's gunbarrels; a third slid in from behind, bazooka at the ready, but Sting flipped around to blow it away with a beam rifle blast, then continue on his way. The gunbarrels darted in ahead of him and spread out to draw the ship's fire; Sting plunged down towards the vessel, then stopped short.

"And this," he said, "is always my favorite part!"

The Fujin fired off a full spread of missiles from the launchers in its hips. The _Drake_'s CIWS emplacements lit up and tore some of them out of the sky—but enough got through to slam into the ship's hull. Sting stole his chance to sweep in and chop off the positron reflector array with a quick beam saber strike—and then darted out of the way as the _Minerva_'s Isolde cannon and Tristans tore the ship apart.

"Well, that was easy enough," Sting chuckled, and glanced around the battlefield for his next target. Two more Windams darted down towards him, beam rifles blazing; the gunbarrels fired back to drive them apart, and Sting backed away and blasted them both apart with his beam rifle. "I could get used to this again, y'know?"

The Fujin Gundam's eyes flashed as it took off back into the battle.

—

Emily cringed as another bulky Long Dagger struggled in vain to catch the nimble Windams and their even quicker gunbarrels, and instead was torn apart by a barrage of railgun shells. She whipped around, the Eclipse's beam sword blazing, and swept it upwards—right through the waist of one of the Windams. None of these Newtypes Morgan had unleashed were particularly strong—but the fact that they were Newtypes at all was unnerving enough.

Especially, she noted as the bisected Windam exploded, since they had that peculiar way of dying.

Emily shook off the feeling and wheeled around towards the survivors. The Sword Calamity up above zigzagged its way through a hail of railgun blasts and charged towards one of the Gunbarrel Windams. The white mobile suit backed away with a beam rifle barrage that sent the Sword Calamity diving for cover; Emily seized the chance to lunge in from behind and cut the Windam in two before it could react.

More shells slammed into the Eclipse and threw her back—and then a wave of beam fire coursed around it and Emily jammed back the controls as the two Exus units swooped down towards her, spewing beam fire, their gunbarrels swarming in close.

"Miss Oldendorf, don't!" a voice cried; the Sword Calamity flung itself into their path and forced them off course, at the cost of one of its swords.

Emily's eyes widened. "What are you doing—?"

"My orders are clear," Four Socius answered. "I am to protect you, even at the cost of my life."

"B-But that's insane!"

"Lady Sahaku wills it." The Sword Calamity charged at the six remaining Gunbarrel Windams, and the orange weapons flashed around the battlefield. Emily ground her teeth and threw open the throttle, hurling the Gundam into the fight.

"What does she want with me...?"

The Eclipse darted to the side as the Windams opened fire, but the Sword Calamity slalomed around their blasts and fired back with its chest-mounted Scylla cannon. The Windams broke ranks again—but one of them ducked underneath the blast and charged, beam saber flashing to life. The Sword Calamity swung down its sword and smacked the saber aside—only for the Windam to lunge up into the Gundam's face and slam one of its Stiletto armor penetrators into the Gundam's torso. It backed away, just as the bomb exploded, and Emily cringed as she felt Four Socius vanish in the blast.

"They're just..." She looked around the battlefield in disbelief, as the Socius clones faltered; another Long Dagger exploded under a hail of beam fire. "They're just dying...for nothing..."

One of the Windams opened fire and forced the Eclipse back on the defensive. Emily shot a furious glance up at the two flickering points of light in the distance, where Mina and Morgan were doing battle.

"You're just throwing their lives away...!"

—

The Zamzazar shuddered as Shinn Asuka pummeled it with a relentless volley of long-range beam cannon fire. The mobile armor swung itself to the side and fired back with a wave of beams; Shinn darted out of harm's way and a cloud of afterimages lit up the sky as he dodged the Zamzazar's fire—

...and from above, another hail of beam fire came down as the Kali Gundam leveled off its beam rifle. The Zamzazar's turrets angled up to open fire—and gave the Zulfiqar all the time it needed to charge in close and slash off the mobile armor's two front claws.

"That's more like it," Shinn said, and glanced up at the Kali. "Stella!"

The stricken Zamzazar had no time to react as Stella plunged down and slammed a beam saber into the mobile armor's remaining claws, blowing them apart. The maimed Zamzazar staggered back under the blasts—and Shinn charged in with a shout and slammed his sword through the cockpit.

"And that should do it," Shinn said with a satisfied grin. He pushed off from the sparking mobile armor and backed away with Stella as it finally exploded. "Went a lot easier than it usually does, I gotta say."

Stella smiled and turned the Kali Gundam back towards the battle. "There's still work to do..."

"That there is," Shinn agreed. "Ready to kick some ass?"

The Zulfiqar and Kali roared back into battle.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Another _Drake_-class destroyer up ahead snapped in half and vanished within a cloud of fire, and Meyrin Hawke sat back with a frustrated sigh. Mina's fleet was not budging from _Ame-no-Mihashira_; Mina herself refused to leave the station vulnerable to a counterattack by moving her ships forward, which left the _Minerva_ and its Gundams on their own. And while they were running rings around the enemy for now, there was no telling how long _that_ bit of good fortune would last.

"My orders come from Lady Sahaku herself," Komatsu, the _Izumo_'s captain, said with an apologetic shrug. "The most I can do is provide fire support from afar."

"I know," Meyrin said, "but we have the advantage. We need to press—"

"Captain, heat source!" Burt cried, and all other voices on the bridge went silent. "It's coming from the Moon..." He trailed off in disbelief. "Captain, it's—"

All was silent as a vast golden beam swept into the battlefield—and straight into _Ame-no-Mihashira_. Komatsu vanished with a scream and the _Izumo_ disappeared in the depths of the blinding light; the tower buckled under the blast as the mighty Requiem punched its way through the platform and seared off into space. The station shuddered and began to drift out of its orbit; the ships surrounding it melted away within the blast; and then the world shook as _Ame-no-Mihashira_ finally exploded and the Requiem's burning light faded away.

The _Minerva_'s bridge was silent. Meyrin's jaw hung open. All that fighting and it had all been blown away just like that...

"Well," Roxy said quietly, "we _had_ the advantage."

Meyrin gathered her wits. "The Amatu," she said. "Mina. Where is she? Is she still active?"

"Her IFF's still broadcasting, but it's moving towards the wreckage field," Burt said. "I can't tell how many of her units survived. It doesn't look like any of the ships made it."

"The Alliance fleet is moving forward," Abbey added. "We don't really have any reason to stick around—"

"Yes we do," Meyrin interrupted. "The survivors will need someone to punch a hole through that fleet for their escape," she scowled at the Alliance and locked away the anger at their once again callously extinguishing lives with that giant laser cannon of theirs, "and that's exactly what we're going to do. All hands, move forward! Break through the center!"

—

A volley of beam shots lanced down from above and forced the Gundam Eclipse off course. The two blue Exus units pulled up, gunbarrels blazing around the black Gundam; Emily darted back behind her beam shield, just as the Fenrir lunged back into the fight with a backhanded beam saber swipe.

"Well," Morgan Chevalier chuckled, "since Miss Goldfinger back there ran off after the Requiem shot, I guess you'll just have to play with me!"

Emily clenched her fists around the controls. "The Requiem..."

"Pretty nasty weapon, isn't it?" Morgan laughed, and the Fenrir came down with another saber swing. Emily backed away and ducked through an opening in the web of beam fire the gunbarrels had spun. The two Exus units lined up behind her, beam cannons ready; Emily darted aside with a flurry of afterimages, but the Fenrir would not be denied so easily and the two mobile suits' blades met in a shower of sparks. "Not really a sportsman's kind of weapon, the Requiem, but if it saves my men from getting killed, I guess I can't complain too much."

"After all the other people it's killed?" Emily snapped.

"Oh, don't go all moral high ground on _me_, Miss Angel of Death," cackled Morgan, and the Fenrir flung the Eclipse back and swarmed its gunbarrels. Emily backed away behind her beam shield. "After all, you've killed quite a few people yourself!"

The Eclipse dove around the blasts, filling the black sky with afterimages; the two Exus units gave chase with a barrage of beam fire from their beam cannons and gunbarrels. "I'm not doing it for something evil!" Emily shouted back.

"Well, don't get mad at _me_, sweetheart, I'm just doing my job."

"Of course you are," snorted Emily, "and that makes it all okay, doesn't it?" The Eclipse whirled around and slammed its beam sword down against the Fenrir's saber.

"And I suppose you've found some kind of _better_ way, huh?" laughed Morgan. "Let's just drop the moral pretenses, kid. There's no place for them out here!"

Emily scowled back at the charging Fenrir and eyed the two Exus units. They would have to go before she could deal with _him_.

—

The vast hull of an _Agamemnon_-class carrier loomed up ahead, with one of those _Izumo_-class ships in front of it, and a couple other warships to the sides throwing up screening fire. To an ordinary man, it might have been daunting—but in the cockpit of the Zulfiqar Gundam, Shinn looked it over and shrugged. He had certainly taken care of things like _this_ before.

"Okay, Stella," Shinn said, "first up is that _Izumo_. You ready?"

Stella nodded; the two Gundams blasted off towards their prey. The off-white and gray _Izumo_ angled its Gottfried guns to open fire and a squadron of Murasames swept down from above with a blaze of beam fire. Shinn snapped up the long-range cannon to fire back and scatter the Murasames; Stella backed away, whipped up her sniper rifle, and blew two of them out of the sky before the rest could react.

"I'll leave them to you, Stella!" Shinn cried, and the Zulfiqar blasted forward with a flash of exhaust and a cloud of afterimages. The Murasames arced around to stop him, only for the Kali to drive them apart again with a barrage of beam fire. The _Izumo_ fired a storm of missiles; Shinn waved them away with a burst of Newtype energy, and the missiles arced back around and slammed into the battleship's hull. The vessel bucked backwards; Shinn seized his chance and roared forward with a shout.

The _Izumo_'s hangar doors opened and a Windam emerged into the linear catapult; Shinn darted to the side and sawed the mobile suit in half as it passed, then lunged into the opening before it closed. Two more Windams were left in the battleship's hangar; they turned in surprise, only to both be torn in two by the Zulfiqar's sword. Shinn leveled off the long-range cannon and pumped blast after blast into the ship's innards—and as smoke and sparks began to fill the hangar, he whipped around and blasted his way back out of the hangar.

And, with a satisfied smirk, he turned the Zulfiqar around to watch as the _Izumo_ broke like a twig amid a fiery explosion.

"Come on," he said to Stella, "there's still more work to do." The Zulfiqar pointed towards the _Agamemnon_ carrier, and the two Gundams rocketed after it.

—

"So how do you know which ship this Jona guy is on?" Viveka asked. The Aurora rocked from a nearby missile detonation and wove its way through a storm of beam fire. Inside the Celestial Justice, Athrun fixed his gaze on the black and red hull of the _Amaterasu_, the Seiran family's own _Izumo_-class battleship—the one where he knew his quarry would be watching the battle.

"It's personal," he said. "Just keep the mobile suits off my back."

Viveka frowned. "If you say so."

The two Gundams rocketed ahead, both in mobile armor mode, and whirled through the defensive fire. Viveka abruptly transformed and showered the attacking Murasames with plasma fire, forcing apart their ranks and letting the Justice blast through. Athrun keyed open a frequency and glowered back up at the _Amaterasu_.

"There you are," he said, "Jona Roma Seiran."

The shocked face of the Protectorate of Orb's Governor-General stared back. "A-Athrun Zala? How in the hell—"

The Justice swiftly changed to its mobile suit form and plunged through a wall of defensive fire with its beam shield. Two Murasames arced around the Justice and angled in to attack; Athrun whipped around and slashed them both in half with the foot-mounted sabers, then continued on his attack.

"I'm glad we both remember each other," Athrun said with a scowl. "Means we don't have to waste time with reintroductions."

Jona glared back. "And just what are _you_ so smug for? We just destroyed _Ame-no-Mihashira!_ You've lost!"

"We'll deal with Sahaku later," Athrun shot back. "Right now this is between me and you." The _Amaterasu_'s Gottfried cannons flashed to life; the Justice danced around their blasts. "After all, you didn't steal Orb from Sahaku. And you didn't usurp the Akatsuki from her. You stole it from Cagalli."

"T-That's ridiculous—"

"And I'm told you're a big believer in second chances," Athrun added, and the Justice roared down towards the black battleship. Jona's eyes went wide in disbelief as the Gundam effortlessly slipped through his ship's fire. "So am I." The Justice's eyes flashed; the Fatum-02 lifted off with a roar and went spiraling up overhead, drawing the _Amaterasu_'s fire. Jona's jaw dropped in horror as the Gundam charged. "_But you're all out of those now!_"

The _Amaterasu_ fired again, the Justice darted to the side and blasted back with its beam rifle, and Jona Roma Seiran disappeared with a scream as the blast slammed through the ship's bridge.

An instant later, the Fatum-02 poured a wall of beam fire into the _Amaterasu_ from above and broke the ship in half. It slammed back onto the Justice's back as the ship finally sputtered to a halt and exploded, and Athrun sat back, letting out a long breath.

"There," he said quietly. "Orb is with you again, Cagalli."

He glanced up towards the battle, where Viveka was still running rings around the Murasames.

"But as for me," he added, "I belong with someone else now."

The Justice looked up towards the Murasames and charged.

—

The Gundam Eclipse darted through a web of beam fire as Emily scanned the skies for her opportunity. Morgan Chevalier laughed excitedly as his gunbarrels chased after her; the Eclipse lunged between their shots and smacked the Fenrir aside with a backhanded beam sword strike, then launched itself upward to avoid the blazing gunbarrels as they charged by with shining beam sabers.

"There!" she shouted, and whipped around; the first Exus charged towards her, beam cannons blazing. She ducked beneath it, then lunged up and sliced it in half with her beam sword. As it exploded, she whirled around to face the second Exus and fired an anchor into its side; the mobile armor lurched back, trying to escape, but she yanked it close and slashed it in two as well. Eight of the twelve flashing gunbarrels went silent; the Fenrir swept down from above with a hard overhead beam saber hack.

"Impressive as always!" Morgan cried. "Too bad it's not good enough!"

"Is it?" Emily shot back—

The silent gunbarrels came to life again and went on the attack—and this time their beams swarmed in around the Fenrir, driving it back. Morgan backpedaled with a yelp of surprise and took cover behind his beam shield as the stolen gunbarrels filled the black sky with beams.

"How the hell are you doing this...?" he muttered, and glanced back at the Eclipse as it charged forward. "Well, you've just got all kinds of surprises up those sleeves of yours..."

The Fenrir ducked beneath another beam barrage and rocketed away. Emily moved to follow, but a blinding light flashed up in front of her and she backed away in frustration from a burning combat flare as the Fenrir made its escape.

—

Silence filled the cockpit of the Amatu as Rondo Mina Sahaku stared in open shock at the damage. The Requiem had annihilated everything. Jona Roma Seiran had annihilated everything.

So many years of marshaling resources and biding her time had come to this. The Socius clones were all dead. The Sword Calamity, the Raider Full Specs, the Long Daggers, all of them wiped out by the Alliance. The _Izumo_, blown away in the blast. _Ame-no-Mihashira_, reduced to rubble. Mina stared desolately at the wreckage and tried to think of something that could be salvaged, but nothing came to mind. Only a handful of stragglers slipping away through a hole in the Alliance lines, and her faithful Amatu, loyal to the end.

_This must be what the end of the world feels like._

"Ah, there you are," a voice spoke up, and Mina turned in surprise at the sight of the gray Judgment Gundam approaching her—and Rau Le Creuset's grinning, masked face on her auxiliary screen. "Not very polite of you to run off like that while you had guests."

Mina scowled. "What do you want?"

"Oh, many things," Rau said, "but I've got plans, you see, and I can't afford to have someone sniffing around at the heels of my little apprentice." Mina's blood went cold. "So at the moment, I'd just like to snip off a loose thread—"

With a flash, the Judgment's DRAGOONs took off, and before Mina could react, they ripped her mobile suit limb from limb. The dying Amatu shuddered as its arms, legs, head, and claws vanished under an unstoppable beam barrage from the Judgment's DRAGOONs—and then the Judgment itself dropped down in front of the dismembered mobile suit, a shocked Mina sitting in the sparking, darkening cockpit.

"...before it becomes a problem," he finished—and Rondo Mina Sahaku disappeared in the middle of a beam rifle blast through the Amatu's cockpit.

Rau backed away with a smirk as what was left of the Amatu met its fiery end, and turned the Judgment back towards the escaping _Minerva_. That had been easy enough.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"The Stargazer has proven to be a very lucrative goldmine of new technology," the ZAFT Black-Shirt said with a confident grin. In the commander's chair in Messiah's control room, Valentine tapped the armrest impatiently, while Kira stood stoically at her side. "As you ordered, Vice Marshal, we've begun conversion of the Stargazer itself into a combat mobile suit. The Voiture Lumiere system has proven to exceed our expectations. But there are other important technologies in the Stargazer as well." He gestured at the images on the holographic screens, where a team of older ZAFT mobile suits was savaging an Alliance _Drake_-class destroyer and its four overwhelmed Windam mobile suits. "As you can see, the AI control modules work well."

Kira frowned. "They're not as good as humans."

"No sir," the officer said, "but they don't need to be." He pressed a button on his remote and blueprints of several of ZAFT's older, Valentine War-era mobile suits appeared. "As you know, we have many of these pre-Millennium mobile suits left in storage, but no pilots to operate them. The AI control module, derived from the Stargazer's advanced artificial intelligence system, will allow us to correct this waste of resources. Even as I speak, our mechanics are outfitting the ZuOOT and GAZuOOT units for space combat, so we can field the maximum number of units possible when the operation begins." He put on that confident look again. "The project is proceeding exceedingly well."

Valentine glanced up at Kira. "Between these automated units and the secret fleet, we'll have a huge advantage going into the attack."

"As long as these things work," Kira said. "Commander, I expect you to fine-tune the AI to the greatest degree possible, and squeeze every ounce of performance out of these machines as you can. Every unit is going to have to count. Understood?"

"Yes sir," he answered with a sharp salute.

Valentine smiled. "You worry too much, Kira. The Alliance has no idea what we're doing."

"It's my job to worry," said Kira.

"I know. Go out to the _Fortuna_. We still have much to do."

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_**, Earth orbit**

"All sensors are clear," the sensor officer reported. "ETA is in twenty-nine hours."

The bridge fell silent and Captain Evers sat back in the captain's chair with a sigh. He wondered if it would even matter this time. The _Seraphim_ didn't have any new equipment, and with only the _Foucault_ and a couple of _Laurasia_ frigates over there for assistance, he couldn't say he rated their chances very highly. Not if what Intel had to say about those new units was true.

But, as the bridge door hissed open and the reason for all this came drifting into view, Evers idly remembered that Commander Ehrmacht had insisted. "Testing opportunity for Zero-Two," he'd called it. Of course.

Varder and Lilith came to a stop by the captain's chair and Evers greeted the former with a salute. "The mechanics just finished switching out the CaZEL's engines for space combat," he said. "In twenty-nine hours we'll be in position to strike."

"Good," Varder said, and cast a surreptitious glance at the _Nazca_-class destroyer and two _Laurasia_-class frigates off the ship's starboard bow. "He didn't say anything about other ships."

"Vice Marshal Yamato doesn't want to risk Zero-Two unnecessarily."

"Of course not," snorted Varder. The auxiliary screen came to life with a flicker and the image of a man with long orange hair in a ZAFT Black-Shirt uniform appeared. "Commander Argenshire, I see you made friends."

"The Sonic Doom, at your service," said Neil Argenshire with a dramatic flourish. "Must confess I'm a bit surprised a FAITH unit would have rounded us all up like this. I was under the impression I was supposed to take our little angel-killer back to Messiah."

"Plans change," Varder said. "The _Minerva_ is in our sights. I expect them to be destroyed. Will you make that happen?"

"Commander, please," Argenshire chuckled, "you asked for an ace, you got an ace. If they haven't learned to fear my orange DOM before, they will when this battle's started."

Varder arched an eyebrow. "I should hope so, commander. _Seraphim_, out."

The screen darkened and Varder turned to stalk off the bridge in disgust. Lilith and Evers shared a look as the bridge door slid shut again.

"I'll...try to talk to him," she offered, and turned towards the doors.

"Don't bother," Evers said with a sigh. "We'll just have to get him back to Messiah when this battle is over."

The doubtful look on Lilith's face did nothing to calm his unease as she left.

—

**ZAFT **_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Foucault**_**, Earth orbit**

Unit Zero-Two drifted through the air in her bunk, the light dossier on the pilot the crew called her archrival in hand. She was supposed to have all this information memorized, but the more she read it and the more she compared it to her library of experience with the Resistance's dreaded Angel of Death, the more she felt her time was being wasted.

They called the Angel of Death her rival, but that open fear and despair she sensed every time she approached the black Gundam made her wonder what they were talking about. The intelligence was clear that she was supposed to be something like herself, a super-soldier designed to destroy on the battlefield and serve her masters. But that in itself was obviously somehow wrong, because it was the Alliance that had forged her, and yet now it was the Alliance that feared her. And if she had joined the Resistance willingly, that made her a weapon with a will of its own.

But they were supposed to be alike. Zero-Two paused to contemplate that idea. Perhaps she could decide for herself whether ZAFT's crusade was hers as well?

Ridiculous. Of course not. If she wasn't ZAFT's weapon, she was nothing, and there was nothing more pathetic and irresponsible than a person without a purpose.

So Unit Zero-One had leapt off her tracks and plunged into the river of existential madness of her own volition. Fine. Zero-Two pondered the dossier further and wondered why that made her apparent rival so fixated on her identity as her mother.

That, at least, was what the dossier suggested. The only reason the girl named Emily even existed was to provide a healthy test subject for her mother's remarkable Newtype powers. And as a genetic backup and further experiment, her mother had been cloned, her genetic flaws corrected, her body slowly built up as that of a Coordinator, a strong and suitable alternative if little Emily didn't work out.

That, after all, was her. Unit Zero-Two. Modified clone of Lorelei von Oldendorf, deployed against her daughter for ZAFT.

But Zero-One seemed to think that she, Zero-Two, _was_ her mother. And that was preposterous.

_Well,_ she mused, _I'll have to break her of that belief. If I don't kill her first._

—

**June 20th, CE 77 - Resistance **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Alexandria**_**, Debris Belt**

The lunar base at Althea Crater was relatively new as lunar installations went. The radioactive remains of Ptolemaeus had been the first base, followed by the rapidly reviving Endymion, then Arzachel and Daedalus, but Althea had been built specifically to hide a dark purpose. It was an open secret that Althea was where the Alliance created its Extended, and some of the most fearsome weapons in its arsenal, like the towering Destroy Gundams.

The thought of _attacking_ that installation, then, was enough to make Joseph Copland's stomach turn.

He sat on the bridge of the _Alexandria_ in his chair above the captain's seat, staring uncomfortably out into space as the ship navigated the treacherous Debris Belt and angled for home at Terminal.

MacIntyre's plan made sense, he supposed. Althea was a place of evil that would have to be captured or destroyed at any rate. It was a source of power for Lord Djibril and his Phantom Pain, and with Daedalus Crater far too heavily fortified for the Resistance's dwindling space fleet to risk attacking, Althea was the next best thing. And, as the old politician's mind worked back into the familiar grooves of power and its distribution, it had a political use as well.

It was an open secret that the Alliance made and used Extended, but few details were publicly known and the mainstream press generally avoided the issue. But if the Resistance were to attack Althea in the course of an Alliance civil war, throw the light onto the evils Lord Djibril had done there, and wield the suffering of the Extended as a bludgeon against Djibril and the Phantom Pain, then the world's opinion would have to change. Copland almost shuddered. He himself had seen what went into making an Extended and what happened to it as it lived and died. And the world was too full of essentially good people not to be horrified at what they would see.

The Extended. He had failed those children once, by allowing them to be mutilated and exploited. And now he would have to exploit them again. But perhaps this would make up for it—because if MacIntyre's plan worked, they would never be needed again.

Copland glanced anxiously at the Moon.

_If his plan works._

—

To be continued...


	38. Phase 38: Lorelei

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 38 - Lorelei

—

**June 21st, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Earth orbit**

"Guess they just can't give us a rest," sighed Sting as he lunged into the air in the _Minerva_'s hangar towards the Fujin Gundam's waiting cockpit. Back on the floor, Emily closed the seals on her helmet's flight suit and glanced up nervously towards her silent Gundam Eclipse. These things all looked the same with their Phase Shift deactivated.

Out there, she could feel the building pressure of Unit Zero-Two. The black _Eternal_ was coming, along with three other ZAFT warships. That meant another showdown with the foe that caused her no end of anguish, and those other two who seemed to delight in pestering her.

She drifted up to the Eclipse's cockpit and took a deep breath. Either way, she still had to go out there and stop that thing. Her friends were counting on her. She thought back to what Malchio had told her, and wondered what fate would have in store for her this time.

—

The first thing Shinn noticed about his oncoming enemies was the bright orange DOM Trooper charging straight towards him, flanked by a pair of GOUF Igniteds. That made him think back to the last ZAFT pilot he had fought who flew an orange mobile suit—and _that_ memory put a sour taste in his mouth.

The DOM Trooper opened fire with two Gigalaunchers and filled the sky with beam fire. Shinn darted down—and Stella lunged up from behind with the beam sniper rifle ready. The DOM and GOUFs ducked aside, but the ZAKUs behind them were not so quick and one of them vanished in a fireball as a beam pierced its cockpit. The ZAKUs split up as the Kali Gundam roared after them.

Undaunted, the orange DOM charged in close, bazookas blazing. Shinn dispensed with the beam rifle in favor of his towering anti-ship sword and slashed the DOM's right-hand Gigalauncher in half as it passed by. The DOM whipped around, beam saber blazing to life, and brought its blade down against the Zulfiqar's sword.

"So!" cackled a man's voice, and the image of a man in a black ZAFT flight suit flickered onto the auxiliary display. "At last I get to cross swords with the Traitor Asuka himself, eh?"

Shinn frowned. "Who the hell are you?"

"You haven't heard of me? Neil Argenshire, the Sonic Doom! The man who took out two battleships at Jachin Due!"

"Please. I took out three battleships the other day."

"Oh, a cocky one, are you?" Argenshire cried, and the DOM surged forward. "We'll see how long _that_ lasts! Kamarov, Walker, _now!_"

The two GOUFs dropped in from above with their beam swords raised high. Shinn glanced up at the two blue mobile suits—then slammed the DOM with a hard kick to the torso and lunged off, dodging the GOUFs' sword swings and twisting away from the DOM's retaliatory beam fire.

"I guess they just let anyone call themselves an ace now," Shinn said, and the Zulfiqar pointed its sword combatively at the three mobile suits. "Well, alright, kids. Same old song and dance. Come and get me."

—

They were afraid. That was the first thing Athrun Zala noticed as the ZAFT ZAKUs broke ranks around his charging Celestial Justice Gundam. Before, these fights against ZAFT had always been against confident enemies who outnumbered and outclassed the _Minerva_'s dwindling supply of mobile suits. But now?

The Justice rocketed forward and transformed with a flash, and Athrun slammed the claws into the chests of two oncoming ZAKUs before they could react. He flung the ruined mobile suits away to let them explode in front of their comrades—and then a wave of plasma fire lanced down from above to claim a third mobile suit, and the Aurora Gundam shot past in its mobile armor mode. Athrun charged forward again with a shout; the surviving ZAKUs backed away fearfully, beam rifles blazing. The Justice smashed its way through their shots and fired back with its beam rifle. One of the ZAKUs, sporting a Slash Wizard pack, lunged above its comrades and came shrieking down with its beam axe held high. Athrun scowled back, darted to the side, whipped around, and slashed it in half with a kick from the foot-mounted saber.

The ZAKUs backed away again, only for their ranks to be peppered with more beam fire, and the Aurora whirled back into the fight in mobile suit mode. The ZAKUs broke ranks; a Gunner ZAKU fired off a pulsing beam cannon blast that forced the two Gundams apart, and the survivors darted around on either side to keep the two Gundams separated.

"Ooh, squad tactics!" laughed Viveka. "Looks like they're learning!"

Athrun took cover behind his beam shield as the ZAKUs closed in. "But not fast enough," he added—and the Justice burst forward with a blaze of beam fire.

—

Auel Neider grinned like a schoolboy as the Marduk Gundam's sights lined up and the beam guns blew two ZAKU Warriors out of the sky. The survivors backed away behind a wall of beam fire; instead, the Fujin Gundam's gunbarrels swarmed around them and tore another two down amid a hail of beam fire. Auel stormed forward, through the ZAKUs' faltering lines, towards the two _Laurasia_-class frigates behind them. The _Nazca_ was already swinging around to fight the _Minerva_ along with that black _Eternal_-class, but these two wouldn't get a chance to join in.

The two frigates let loose a torrent of beam fire and railgun shells; the Marduk backed away behind its shoulder shells and let the Geschmeidig Panzer system send the beams flying off course. Another squad of ZAKUs rose to challenge him; the Fujin's gunbarrels forced them back with a flurry of beam fire. The Marduk seized its chance to rush forward, and Auel grinned with delight as he swept down onto one of the unsuspecting ZAKUs. The long beam blade of the Marduk's naginata flashed to life and cleaved the ZAKU in two, and Auel laughed triumphantly as he turned back towards the warships.

"Now, if I remember this right, you have a great big weak point somewhere on there," he said, and ducked beneath another wave of firepower from the first _Laurasia_. "And there we go!"

Thrusters blazing, the Marduk slalomed its way through the frigate's furious fire and parked itself underneath the hull, in front of the point where the ship's mobile suit pod met the main hull. The two guns mounted underneath angled towards the Marduk's back—but not before the blue and white mobile suit let loose a devastating barrage of beam fire through the warship's stern section. The _Laurasia_ sputtered fire and Auel made his escape with a gleeful smile as it finally cracked in half and vanished within a billowing cloud of flames.

"Man, that never gets old," he said with a sigh. "Alright! Which one of you fuckers is next?"

—

Sword met saber as the Gundam Eclipse and the Providence ZAKU battled their way across the black sky, DRAGOONs from the latter flashing through the battlefield and spinning a net of beam fire around the two combatants. Emily gritted her teeth as the pressure assaulted her mind and swung her sword up to deflect the Providence ZAKU's blow.

"Left a blind spot, I see!" screamed Varder, and the CaZEL descended from behind with its swords raised high. Emily ground her teeth and surged forward, throwing the Providence ZAKU back; quicker than quick, she whipped around to swat the CaZEL's swords aside with her own blade, then rocketed out of the two mobile suits' reach as they both opened fire, and ducked down again under the relentless beam fire from the hulking CaVAL overhead.

"Leaving so soon?" Lilith cried, and the CaVAL poured beam fire into the Eclipse's beam shield. The DRAGOONs swarmed again and forced Emily back further, underneath a horizontal saber blow from the Providence ZAKU; the CaZEL charged in close, swords pulled back for another attack—

Instead, a wave of pulsing red beam blasts through the battlefield and forced the CaZEL off course—and the Judgment Gundam blasted its way into the fight and drove the two ZAFT mobile suits back.

"Emily!" barked Rau. "I will deal with these two! You engage the Providence ZAKU!"

Emily turned her eyes back towards the gray mobile suit and her hands trembled. "A-Alright..."

The Providence ZAKU charged again and the two mobile suits descended into a swift swordfight. "You may be undistracted now by those two," Unit Zero-Two snarled, "but so am I."

Emily clenched her teeth and swung her sword up to block Zero-Two's downward saber hack. "Is that so..."

"And this time," Zero-Two added, "we'll have to finish this. For good."

The two mobile suits charged again; Emily veered off at the last minute and darted away, the Providence ZAKU hot on her trail.

—

**ZAFT **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Seraphim**_

The _Seraphim_ rocked as the _Minerva_'s missiles flashed by and the CIWS emplacements cut them down. Evers cringed in the captain's chair. They had never been _this_ good before, but the mobile suits were already being torn to pieces, the _Ohm_ had just been destroyed, and the _Beckman_ was under attack by one—just one—of those damned new Gundams.

How had the _Minerva_ and the Resistance gotten a hold of technology like this? The _Seraphim_ shook again and knocked him out of his thoughts.

"Bow down, angle thirty degrees!" he barked. "Get underneath them! Where's the _Foucault?_"

His question was answered as the _Nazca_-class destroyer _Foucault_ angled its prow above the _Minerva_ and swung down its main guns—only for the _Minerva_ to veer to starboard and let its blasts sear by harmlessly. The _Minerva_'s Isolde boomed; the _Foucault_ shuddered as the shells ripped over its engine block.

"All guns, fire!" Evers cried; the _Seraphim_ nosed towards the _Minerva_ and its Tristan cannons sprang to life, but the winged battleship turned out of harm's way and its own weapons turned to target the crippled _Foucault._ "Missiles! Don't let them—"

Evers went silent as the _Minerva_ abruptly raised its prow and the blinding red light of the Tannhäuser lanced out and erased the _Foucault_ from existence.

"How did they get like this...?" he muttered. "Helm, bring us around! Get us behind the _Minerva_ and keep us there!"

"They're coming around, sir! Missiles!" the sensor officer cried.

Evers' blood boiled. "CIWS, respond! Do not let them get us in their sights!" He clenched his fists around his seat's armrests. As long as they had to recharge their positron cannon, he had a window of opportunity where the two ships' firepower was more or less equal—and he had comrades to avenge.

"Captain, more missiles!"

"CIWS!"

The _Seraphim_ shuddered as more explosions went off around it, and Evers scowled hatefully at the _Minerva_. He was beginning to understand how Commander Ehrmacht felt.

—

With a flash of exhaust, the Fujin Gundam darted through a wave of beam fire from five desperate, scarlet-painted ZAKU Warriors and pressed them back with a barrage from its gunbarrels. Sting positioned himself above the attackers and unleashed a storm of micromissiles from the Fujin's hip armor compartments; the ZAKUs backed away and one of them vanished in a plume of flame as a missile found its way to the cockpit.

"Four more," he muttered to himself, and maneuvered the Fujin around a pulsing red blast from a Gunner ZAKU. A Blaze ZAKU came whirling in next, beam rifle blazing; Sting darted to the side and swung out the Fujin's leg to saw the ZAKU in half with the foot-mounted saber. The survivors intensified their fire, but the gunbarrels held them at bay and Sting swung up his beam rifle to shoot down another.

The two remaining ZAKUs backed away, the Gunner ZAKU firing off another sweeping beam. Down below waited the second _Laurasia_ frigate, surrounded by another squad of ZAKUs pouring beam fire after the Marduk. Sting sent the gunbarrels lancing down after the two retreating mobile suits; they let loose a cloud of missiles of their own that drove the two ZAKUs back further. And before either could react, the Fujin rocketed in between them, flipped around, and took them both down with a beam shot each to the back.

Sting glanced back down at the _Laurasia_ and the squad of ZAKUs, faltering under the Marduk's unstoppable firepower. "Suppose I should go give him a hand," he said with a sigh, and the Fujin and its darting gunbarrels launched themselves down towards the ship.

—

A beam saber clashed against a towering anti-ship sword as the orange DOM Trooper struggled to keep up with the flickering afterimages and raw speed of the Zulfiqar Gundam. The Gundam came down from above with a devastating overhead swing that sent the DOM sprawling back; the two GOUFs put themselves in between the orange mobile suit and its shimmering foe, only for another sweeping swing to drive them both back as well. One of them darted around and raised its left arm to bring its beam guns to bear—

...but instead, a shining green bolt slammed clear through its cockpit and blew it apart. Inside the Zulfiqar, Shinn smirked as he glanced up at the source. "You're late, Stella."

"There were lots of enemies," Stella huffed, and the Kali Gundam spiraled down into the fight with a volley from its beam rifle.

The DOM roared forward with a blast from its Gigalauncher. "I'll pay you back for Walker!" Argenshire screamed. "Kamarov, _go!_"

Abruptly, the GOUF lunged up from behind the Zulfiqar and snared the Gundam's right arm with a heat rod. It yanked back the arm, leaving the Zulfiqar wipe open to attack; the DOM showered the Kali Gundam with bazooka shells and drove it back behind a cloud of smoke, then switched course and dove down towards the Zulfiqar with its saber raised for a final blow.

Shinn grinned back. "You thought _this_ would work?" The DOM closed in—

And an instant later, the Zulfiqar tugged its right arm back around and pulled the GOUF close, then slammed its free left hand into the cockpit and blew the mobile suit apart with a shot from the palm cannon. Argenshire flung himself to the side in shock—just in time for a beam rifle shot to lance out of nowhere and rip his mobile suit's arm off at the shoulder. The Kali gave chase with a volley of beam fire that put the DOM back on the defensive.

And then, with a crunch of crumpling metal and flying sparks, Argenshire disappeared in a spray of blood as the Zulfiqar rammed its sword through the DOM's cockpit. Shinn yanked it back out, sliced the ruined machine in half, and backed away as it exploded.

"Well," he muttered, "that was fun."

"They're so scared," Stella added.

Shinn heaved a sigh. "For now," he said. "It won't take them long to figure us out. Let's get going."

—

"What do you mean _destroyed?_" shrieked Varder Ehrmacht, even as the CaZEL furiously dodged the relentless fire from the Judgment Gundam's flashing DRAGOONs.

Evers shook his head solemnly. "We've lost almost our entire force," he said. "There's no way—"

"No!" Varder cried. "Keep fighting!" He whirled around on the Judgment and opened fire with his beam cannons; the gray Gundam elegantly arced around his blasts and answered him in spades with the beam guns mounted on its body.

"Varder, this is suicide!" Lilith shouted back. "We've lost!"

"No! Not yet! Not until we find _her!_"

Rau Le Creuset's chuckle broke through the chatter. "Ah, it's so amusing, a man who calls himself the Widowmaker trying to conquer Death herself."

Varder's eyes dulled with fury. "_Traitor!_"

"Yes, yes, well, I was never really on your side to begin with." The Judgment Gundam slammed its saber down onto the CaZEL's swords and drove the green mobile suit back. The CaVAL opened fire with its beam cannons, but the Judgment warded the larger machine off with a burst of DRAGOON fire and returned its attention towards the CaZEL. "So, Commander Ehrmacht, what to do?"

The CaZEL ducked down beneath the Judgment's horizontal saber swipe—and then fired a combat flare up into the Judgment's face and rocketed off into the blackness.

"Varder!" Lilith cried, and the CaVAL went after him with a roar.

Rau smirked back at the two retreating mobile suits and mentally traced their flight path—and focused on the two points of pressure off in the distance.

_Well, well,_ he said, _this should be interesting..._

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Meyrin fixed her eyes on the jet-black hull of the _Eternal_ cruiser up ahead. The _Eternal_-class had speed enough to match the _Minerva_, but it wasn't designed for head-to-head engagements with enemy warships—and that was the only way _this_ little trick was going to work.

"Abes just checked in," Abbey said. "They're done with the Parsifals."

"Good. Malik, bring us around; Chen, load the new missiles into the tubes and fire on my mark."

The _Minerva_ groaned as the winged battleship veered through a cloud of beam fire and wheeled around towards the black warship. The Tristan cannons on its prow angled to fire, but the blasts seared by harmlessly through the _Minerva_'s swirling wake, and the battleship nosed up into position.

Meyrin leaned forward. "Parsifal, fire!"

The _Minerva_'s full complement of Parsifal air-to-surface missiles rushed out of the tubes and arced around towards the _Eternal_. The black ship's CIWS units sliced the projectiles out of the sky—and Meyrin tightened her grip on the armrests as the telltale smoke of an anti-beam depth charge cloud billowed up around the ship. The Tristans tried to fire again but shorted out amidst a cloud of beam-dampening particles.

"They're moving, captain—!" Burt started.

"Target the engine block! Isolde, Neidhardt, _fire!_"

The _Minerva_ shuddered and the Isolde boomed—and a few shells and Neidhardt space combat missiles later, the black _Eternal_ was ripped apart by a thundering explosion.

Meyrin sat back with a satisfied sigh and glanced around the battlefield. There were still a few mobile suits left, being mopped up by the Gundams, but the last _Laurasia_ frigate finally succumbed to the Marduk's avalanche of firepower and exploded. The battle was won.

But there was still something out there—and Emily would have to be the one to deal with it.

—

The Gundam Eclipse jammed its sword into the beam saber's path to deflect the blow, then surged forward to fling the Providence ZAKU back on its heels. The gray mobile suit launched its DRAGOONs to spin a web of beam fire between the two machines, but with afterimages filling the sky around her, Emily wove her way through the blasts and stormed in close again to leave the two mobile suits locked together, sparks scattering around them.

"I see you've found your nerve this time," growled Unit Zero-Two.

Emily ground her teeth—she even _sounded_ like her mother. "That's because I'm looking for something."

"Are you now."

The Eclipse pressed harder against its foe's blade. "Something in you."

With a crash, the Providence ZAKU slammed its knee up into the Eclipse's chest and then drove it back further with a hard kick to the head. "Perhaps you should be focusing on your piloting instead."

Emily flung the Eclipse back, zigzagged her way through another storm of beam fire, then vaulted up over the blasts and came back down with another hard swing against the Providence ZAKU's beam saber.

"If you really _are_ just like me, then I know deep down, you don't really want to be the way you are!" She pushed the Providence ZAKU back again—and then, before Zero-Two could react, she fired the left-hand anchor into the mobile suit's beam rifle, yanked it out of its grip, and flung it aside. The Providence ZAKU swarmed its DRAGOONs; Emily ducked around the two charging beam spikes and rushed in close for another swordfight. "If you're really like me, then you know I'm not really your enemy!"

Zero-Two scowled. "If we _are_ so alike, then you also should understand why that's impossible."

Emily thought back to what Malchio had said—fate and destiny. She reached out towards the pulsing pressure in front of her—pulled tight with determination and focus, but underneath it was churning emotion she couldn't identify. What was it? Anger? Fear? Sadness? Resignation? "It's only impossible if you want it to be."

The Providence ZAKU flung the Eclipse back with a saber swing. "If this is some kind of trick to get me to surrender, it's not working," Zero-Two snapped. "I am here to do my job and I will do it, no matter how much angst it causes you."

Emily cringed as the Providence ZAKU charged towards her. Fate and destiny—what was given and what was offered—

An instant later, the bolt of energy struck before her and she jerked the Eclipse to the side to dodge the Providence ZAKU's killing stab. The DRAGOONs swarmed again; she blazed a flickering path through their shots and slammed her beam sword down against the Providence ZAKU's blade, crashing the two mobile suits together. Zero-Two yelped in surprise—

And then, Emily summoned up every memory of her mother, every good feeling she'd ever known from her, and shoved them towards the pressure in the other cockpit. Zero-Two gasped in surprise at the entirely new feeling radiating from her opponent—and those memories, of a kindly, frail woman offering love and compassion to her hurting daughter.

"W-What are you doing?" Zero-Two cried.

"You don't have to be _this_," Emily said quietly. "You can be like _that_."

"_There you are!_"

Emily's eyes went wide and she instinctively lunged away from the Providence ZAKU as a wall of beam fire sliced through the space between the two mobile suits. She felt her blood boil in frustration as the CaZEL and CaVAL roared into battle.

"I think you've run away from me for long enough!" Varder roared.

Emily turned back towards the Providence ZAKU and felt the walls closing again and the pressure turning rigid and focused once more. Her eyes flicked back towards the CaZEL and CaVAL—and the seed fell.

The two mobile suits lunged apart as the Providence ZAKU backed away; Emily ducked beneath the CaVAL's beam cannon blasts and whipped around to face the oncoming CaZEL. It brought down both of its swords with a downward hack; Emily batted them aside and slammed the green mobile suit back with a kick to the chest, then whirled around again to swat aside the CaVAL's beam blasts.

"You two," Emily snapped, "are _always in my way!_"

The CaZEL slid in behind the Eclipse, beam cannons ready; Emily somersaulted over the blasts, turned again, and slammed the CaZEL with another kick to its chin that sent the mobile suit reeling. And with a third reverberating blow, she slammed her foot down into the CaZEL's torso and sent the machine spiraling into the CaVAL, knocking both mobile suits back.

"What the—Zero-Two, do something!" Lilith cried. Zero-Two shook her head and the DRAGOONs took off with a flash—

...and their beams passed through nothing, as the afterimages filled the sky and the Eclipse's Voiture Lumiere system burst to life. The black Gundam came down with a scream from its pilot and slashed off the CaVAL's entire left arm. Lilith yelped in surprise and raised her right arm to bring her carbine to bear—only for a sweeping sword blow from the Eclipse to sever it at the elbow and slice off the head as well.

The CaZEL charged with a beam volley; the Eclipse ducked around the blasts and slammed the green mobile suit aside with another volley. The maimed CaVAL backed away under a curtain of artillery fire from the two dual cannons on its back; the black Gundam flipped over its shots, came down with another flash, and sliced off both cannons and the CaVAL's entire backpack, then kicked it away and whipped around to face the CaZEL.

"_Why won't you just die?_" Varder screamed. Emily narrowed her eyes and seized her chance—

Faster than Varder could see, the Eclipse blasted forward and sliced off the CaZEL's right arm at the shoulder, its right wing, and its right leg at the knee. The mobile suit turned with its remaining sword for a horizontal blow—but the Eclipse caught its arm in its free left hand and wrenched it off at the shoulder, then hurled it away. The CaZEL backed away, just as the Eclipse sliced off its head; the black Gundam rushed in close with its sword raised for a deathblow—

Instead, the Providence ZAKU dropped in to deflect the sword with its shoulder shields, and before Emily could recover, it seized the two mutilated mobile suits in its arms and roared away behind a wall of beam fire and combat flares.

Emily watched helplessly as her enemy made its escape, and hung her head in defeat, the last wisps of Zero-Two's presence still lingering in her mind.

—

**Terminal, Debris Belt**

The conference room fell silent, and Joseph Copland held back a sigh. He had seen this coming, really, but that didn't make it any better.

"Althea Crater...?" someone echoed.

The remaining leaders of the Resistance forces in space glanced awkwardly between each other. Finally, Kenaf Lucini leaned back with a derisive snort.

"You're being tricked, Copland," he scoffed. "Only explanation." The others glanced questioningly at him. "Why else would the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ask you to undertake a suicide mission? I told you this was a terrible idea—"

"We know, Lucini," grumbled the octogenarian Admiral Barton at the other end of the table. Copland glanced anxiously at him and that pressed and starched Royal Navy uniform he wore, golden finery and all, exuding the same air of authority as Admiral MacIntyre. It was one of the reasons why he was up here, where he'd put together a formidable, if untested fleet of his own.

"Whether or not it's a trick, there's no way we can do it," added the other admiral in the room, Rear Admiral Buckley, the man who still wore the Atlantic Federation uniform he'd worn at Jachin Due. "We don't have the ships."

At the other end of the table, Meriol Pistis leaned forward. "We do have the _Minerva_." All eyes turned towards her. "You've all seen the combat footage of their battle at _Ame-no-Mihashira_, and the battle against that ZAFT squadron."

Oshida arched an eyebrow at his spot next to Barton. "The _Minerva_ can't take Althea on its own."

"They don't have to," Meriol answered. "But we can go with them. The Alliance won't expect it."

"If MacIntyre isn't tricking you," Lucini snorted, "which he is."

"No," Copland spoke up, and the room was silent again, "he is not." He fixed his subordinates with an iron look. "James MacIntyre is not the sort of man who would do that. If he wanted to kill us, he would do it on the battlefield, plain and simple. Now then," he folded his hands on the table, "the question here is not whether we are attacking Althea. It's when and how. We do not have a choice. MacIntyre is lining up reinforcements for us; I cannot go into detail, even with you. But the _Minerva_ alone cannot do this. We will need the best the Resistance has to offer to join them. And that means," he glanced at one place at the table, "we will need you."

Aoma Vedlow stared back, arms crossed. "Fair enough," she said.

—

**June 22nd, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Sven Cal Bayan stared disinterestedly at the towering sight before him. A squad of Euclid mobile armors stretched out in one of Althea's cavernous hangars, and overhead a massive Zamzazar was suspended on a set of heavy cranes. But the center of the hangar was dominated by the Earth Alliance's unstoppable symbol of power, the Destroy Gundam.

Sven had always found the sentiments attached to that thing to be kind of ridiculous. For all its reputation as an invincible juggernaut, it certainly got defeated often enough—usually by those damned Gundams on the _Minerva_. And for all they were hyped, they weren't really all that useful except in a handful of circumstances.

But it was a deathblow to the Destroy's mystique for one to know what really went into the machine's operation. A crazed Extended hooked up to psychoactive drugs made for a very ugly sight when they had to pull the thing out of the cockpit.

It was the Earth Alliance symbolized: a façade of power and terror, hiding hideous crimes and terrible sacrifices. And Sven Cal Bayan had had a front row seat for that twisted underbelly even before Lord Djibril had reshaped the Alliance into his own worldwide dictatorship. Deep down, he knew his precocious younger self was right about this place. They were evil, they were never going to change, and he would just be killed doing their bidding.

But how could it be any different? He had been with the Phantom Pain since its inception, as the private army of Blue Cosmos, answering to the shadowy industrialists and corporate aristocrats who controlled so much of the world. He knew things that could destroy politicians and businessmen the world over. His testimony could destroy empires. If he left their service...well, he would not leave their service except in a coffin. And he would not be able to blame them, for if he were in their position, he would have pulled the trigger as well. Sven Cal Bayan knew too much to live outside the Phantom Pain's grip.

And even if he managed to escape, what else would he do? The Phantom Pain had taken great care to ensure that he had combat skills and made an excellent soldier, but nothing else. There was the private military contractor business, perhaps, but that world appeared to be the province of the ill tempered, the psychotic, the outcasts, the ones that couldn't find a place in the regular military. Even the Phantom Pain's barbarities were not bereft of a greater purpose, but even Sven had had to shudder at the stories of what some of those contractors had done in their off time, armed with heavy weapons, power, and alcohol.

And nothing would piss off his younger self like going from a Phantom Pain thug to a hired thug.

He glanced around the hangar and was suddenly very glad for the lack of windows. The last thing he needed right now was to see the stars—and remember that he could have been something so much better than this.

—

"You know, they weren't kidding when they told you not to let this happen at Volkov," Kelly Maynard admonished.

At her side on the observation deck overlooking one of Althea's many hangars, Erin Gedelberg slumped down in defeat. "It's a little late for that now."

"Of course." Kelly sat back and tapped some ash off her cigarette. "So just do as I said, and don't let this affect your performance. It won't matter either way if you all get killed."

"I understand," Erin sighed. "Thanks." She quietly excused herself and left Kelly behind to sigh in annoyance. Damn kids and their hormones.

She glanced over her shoulder bitterly at the hangar below. Of course, she had been in that boat once before herself. But watching her old flame's Mobius get cleaved in two by a GINN's sword at Endymion had taught her well that a heart given to a fellow soldier was a heart that would probably never come back. They'd told her that in training, and she had nodded and said she'd understood, and then she went and fell in love anyway, because the heart never listened to anyone, and she simply had to let the pain do the teaching, as it did so well.

Of course, she was their commanding officer and it was her responsibility to make sure they all came back alive. So who knew, maybe it would work out. But that was another hard lesson from that day, sitting in the sparking cockpit of a ruined mobile armor and staring in desolation at the cloud of debris before her. On the battlefield, one's control over one's fate was tenuous at best.

She stowed away the memories. They were useful when someone else around base caught her eye for reminding her of where that road led, but dwelling would only lead to madness. Something _else_ the kids would have to learn.

—

General Hans von Schadt was quite proud of the workings of Althea Crater. A little too proud, in Captain Danilov's opinion. They strode together down an observation corridor and Schadt gestured grandly downward. Danilov followed his arm—and felt his stomach churn.

"That's Group 37," Schadt said, "and they've been progressing at a much faster rate than the others. Eliminated half of the unsuitable subjects among their ranks in about three weeks."

Down below, under the steely gaze of men in Phantom Pain uniforms, a group of children was fighting with knives. Several of them lay motionless on the floor atop pools of blood; they all wore shock collars and fought with the crazed tenacity of the condemned. Danilov took a step back as his blood went cold.

"Captain," Schadt said with a disinterested look, "what's the matter?"

One of the children ducked beneath another's haphazard horizontal slash, then stepped forward and slammed his knife into his opponent's chest. The wounded boy staggered back; the first yanked his knife out and slashed open his foe's throat with a quick cut, then whipped around as the dying child collapsed in a bloody heap.

Danilov's stomach turned. "General," he said, "do they...always do that?"

"Of course," Schadt said with a shrug. "Basic principle of evolution, captain. Those least fit for their environment will be purged by those better adapted." He turned away. "I understand that to a frontline officer like you, they just look like children, but I assure you they are not. They came to us as something less than nothing; the ones that survive will become something greater."

In the room below, one of the officers blew a whistle and the surviving children snapped to attention, even those with injuries. Another officer barked orders at them and they promptly answered with a muffled shout and marched off, leaving a handful of soldiers to start collecting the bodies.

Danilov slowly looked back at Schadt, staring indifferently at the gruesome scene below—and his blood began to boil.

—

"Pretty slick, setting him up for a tour of Althea," said Travis Alterman with a chuckle. He kicked back in the Nebula Blitz's cockpit seat and smirked, safe in the knowledge that his transmission was being rerouted through so many proxies and decoys that nobody would think to connect the dots between its recipient and himself—and in the meantime, the mechanics would just think he was watching porn or something in here. "Guy's gonna have nightmares for weeks. They do crazy shit here, y'know."

On the screen, Grand Admiral MacIntyre's eyes narrowed. "I am aware, ensign. That is why I'm calling you. I am rapidly running out of ways to force his defection and you are the man in place to judge whether or not I am succeeding. Is he on the verge or not?"

Travis shrugged. "Tough to say. Depends on what they show him on the tour. You think Schadt is dumb enough to have him watch a cage match between children or somethin'?"

"That's what I'm counting on."

"Well," Travis sighed, "if that's the case, then I'd say all this might work out. But the whole 'predicting human behavior' thing starts getting dicey around here. He might just decide that a good soldier doesn't think about the shit that goes on behind the curtain."

MacIntyre arched a white eyebrow. "Do you believe that's what he'll do?"

"Eh. Probably not. But I could be wrong."

"You'd best not be," MacIntyre growled, "because we have far too much riding on this." He sighed. "Continue observing him as you have. If watching the real horrors of the Extended manufacture process doesn't break him, nothing will."

"If you say so, boss," chuckled Travis.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, en route to Terminal**

Rau Le Creuset smiled as he felt Emily set foot on their little sanctuary on the internal observation deck. The door slid shut and Rau took a moment to savor the little vortex within her.

"So I hear you encountered Zero-Two again," he said. Emily nodded reluctantly. "Did you learn anything?"

Emily squirmed for a moment. "I...tried something new."

"Oh?"

"I...I thought that if she understood what I see in her, she'd be more willing to talk. And since Newtypes can understand each other, I...tried to make her understand. Why I feel like I can save her."

Rau frowned. "Save her?"

"I can do it this time. She's not an Extended, like Kyali. She doesn't depend on ZAFT for her survival. And now I know how to use these powers, so I can have a special connection with her, and..." She shook her head. "It will be different this time. I can bring her over."

Silence reigned for a moment as Rau studied her face, his mind churning. "Emily," he said, "you may be on to something."

"I just don't know if I'll get another chance," she continued. "Some other enemies interrupted me when I thought I'd finally, you know, made a connection."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Rau said with a chuckle. "You'll find in playing this game that even if you don't say all the things you wanted to say, the other person's mind will as often as not fill in the rest for you. It's convenient like that, to be sure."

Emily leaned against the railing, staring into the depths of space. "I couldn't really feel much from her in that moment."

"You'll have plenty more chances."

"I know." She bowed her head. "It's like Father Malchio said. Fate and destiny."

—

In the three years she'd had it, Viveka von Oldendorf had found an endless variety of uses for her mechanical arm and its curiously strong finger joints. Crushing a man's trachea in one hand was one; punching through wooden doors and the like was another; and pinning Athrun to the bed while she had crazed, animal sex with him was still another. It was a shame they were in zero gravity now, where sex was pretty much impossible without the aid of decidedly un-erotic implements.

Plus, she could use it to intimidate virtually anyone, and as long as she had to play the role of overprotective father for her sister to the hapless Trojan Noiret, it worked better than a shotgun.

Leaning on said mechanical arm in the crew lounge and fixing Trojan with a no-nonsense look, she silently relished his awkward explanation of what he meant about wanting to "be with" Emily—on the battlefield, to keep her safe, not that she needed it or anything, but not that he meant to imply he didn't care, because of course he wouldn't do something so inappropriate—

He was a good kid, really, and Viveka didn't mind if _he_ started dating her sister. He'd proven that, if nothing else, by jumping onto a moving car at Copernicus to pull her out of it. But she was honor-bound to at least make the little bastard squirm a bit first. It was sisterly obligation.

"Besides," Trojan said with a sigh, "I probably can't even keep up with her anyway." Viveka arched the eyebrow over her good eye. "You've seen how fast the Eclipse is. There's no way whatever Lowe cobbles together for me is gonna be that fast."

"You know," Viveka said, "I'm probably the last person to be saying this to you, but she really can take care of herself in battle. You don't need to worry about that. I don't need to worry about." Her small smile vanished. "But if you break her heart, I will break your _everything_. Got me?"

"G-Gotcha."

"Good boy," she said, and gave him a playful smack on the shoulder—with the mechanical arm, to leave a nice bruise, "so I'll see ya around."

Viveka grinned as she drifted out the door. This overprotective father thing was _fun_.

—

"I don't know if Stella will have a problem," Meyrin said quietly, head in her hands in the _Minerva_'s captain's office. Shinn sat on the other side of her desk. "Did she ever go to Althea?"

"I doubt it. They closed down Lodonia in the beginning of CE 73, which is also when they opened Althea, and moved everything up there." He shrugged. "She probably never went there. The records say she got out of the training regimen in 72."

Meyrin tried not to think about what would be waiting for them at Althea Crater—and that wasn't counting the defenses. "Sting and Auel won't like it."

"Oh, I dunno, freeing Extended might be right up their alley."

"But not seeing them."

Shinn frowned. "It's not gonna be a cakewalk for any of us."

Meyrin shook her head. "I still don't get why we're doing it in the first place. Copland said he would explain when we get to Terminal, but..." She sighed. "Malchio told me that we've got to be the ones to end the war. He said we'll have to be like..." She squirmed. "Well, like Lacus Clyne."

Shinn's eyes darkened. "Yes," he said, "like Lacus Clyne." His mind took him back to those last weeks of the Junius War—the moment when he watched the Requiem destroy the PLANTs, the preternatural serenity as Lacus Clyne threw the dice to save the world.

And here they were again.

—

Three gunshots ripped through the target poster. With a satisfied grin, Sting Oakley stepped back in the _Minerva_'s internal target range and admired what would have been three lethal bullet wounds in his target, had it been a living human.

At his side, Auel Neider snorted disgustedly. "Lucky shots."

"Oh, fuck you," Sting shot back. "Not my fault you suck with the 67R." He emptied the chamber and ejected the clip, then stepped aside. "Well kid, you're up."

Lily stepped forward with an unsure look and steadied herself in the stall as a new target scrolled down at the end of the range. Auel crossed arms and watched disinterestedly as she took aim—

...and three shots later, he blinked in disbelief at the three bullet holes clustered precisely around the bull's-eye. "Wait a minute," he gawked, "how the hell did you do that?"

Lily grinned as she emptied the weapon. "Maybe you really _do_ suck."

"Oh, go to hell, both of you! Accuracy isn't everything!" He pointed accusingly at Sting. "Remember that time at Armory 1? I totally killed a couple guys by shooting the gun over my shoulder!"

"That was a submachinegun and you emptied a whole magazine," Sting scoffed.

"Fuck you! It was awesome and you know it!"

As another argument flared up, Lily peered at the target and wondered why she never saw Emily down here. Proficiency with firearms was important. She was important. And Lily would have hated to see something happen to her.

She frowned at the target spread, reloaded the weapon, and called up another target. She could do better.

—

"So," said Athrun, "in theory it's possible, but in practice you probably won't get a chance to try it."

Standing on the gantry in front of the silent Gundam Eclipse, Emily frowned at the ports in the mobile suit's forearms, behind which hid the Gundam's wire-guided anchors. So much for electrocuting the Providence ZAKU out of action. "Okay," she said tiredly.

Athrun arched an eyebrow. "Why do you want to know anyway?"

She closed her eyes. "That...clone of my mother," she explained. "I think I can save her."

Athrun was silent for a moment and Emily tried not to cringe at the troubled feelings washing out of him. "You know I went through something similar—"

"Yes. Viveka told me."

"But, Emily, you know that clone isn't your mother."

Emily squeezed her eyes shut. "I know."

"Then why try to save her?"

"Why shouldn't I?" She turned towards him. "She's the closest thing I have left to my mother. The one parent who loved me. And she has the same powers I do, so she can understand me, in a way that my sister never could. How could I not try to save her?"

Athrun gestured at the Eclipse. "But she's not going to be like your mother, for the same reason that clone the Alliance used wouldn't have been like Kira. If that's what you're—"

"I'm not looking for a replacement," Emily said, balling her fists.

"I didn't say you were," Athrun replied, "but this won't work out the way you think it will. It wouldn't have worked for the Alliance's clone of Kira, because it wasn't Kira's genes that made him who he was, it was his experiences—and the clone had had an entirely different set of experiences. It will be the same with Zero-Two."

Emily turned away. "But you already hated the person the clone reminded you of," she said, and drifted off before Athrun could answer.

Left behind, he leaned back against the rail. Of course, that wasn't technically true—because at this point, he knew that Kira Yamato was dead. He'd made peace with that and accepted that the man who had killed Cagalli and Lacus was someone entirely different, a twisted homunculus created by Rau Le Creuset. But this one...this one was different. Emily still had good memories of her mother, memories that came back to the surface every time she fought her mother's clone. No doubt someone had known about that. No doubt _Kira_ had known about that.

Athrun watched Emily go with a sigh. She would have to learn for herself—and that was the hardest lesson of all.

—

To be continued...


	39. Phase 39: The Fortress of Sin

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 39 - The Fortress of Sin

—

**June 23rd, CE 77 - The Capitol, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Seri Minamoto had carried out many assassinations in the shadowy service of Senator Meyers. Enough to haunt her sleep. But none of them had been quite so complicated—and quite so fraught with danger—as this one.

The dull roar of a press of politicians, press, staff, and assorted minions masked her footfalls as she strolled through the Capitol Rotunda. President Vasserot and Speaker of the House Rose would be passing through here soon, and when they did, she had to be well out of the line of fire—because things in here would be getting nasty in short order.

It had taken four months and over a hundred thousand dollars to get this all set up, most of it in various payments to the Resistance cell through which they had worked. Security would be intense—she could already see the black-suited bodyguards taking up their stations around the Rotunda—but the wheels of corruption made anything possible.

Seri found her place in the shadows beside one of the statues. The trail was perfectly hidden.

The reporters swarmed towards the door and the flashbulbs went off like a thousand suns as President Vasserot hobbled his way towards the corridor to the House chamber, leaning heavily on his cane. He was supposed to give a speech today, delivered to a joint session of the Atlantic Federation Congress, a speech where it was rumored he would outline a change in the Atlantic Federation's strategy in the Alliance's wars. Whatever that change was, it would be irrelevant.

She leaned back as Vasserot limped towards the center of the room, with the unassuming Speaker Rose at his side. She heard a handful of clicks not from the cameras—

And then the Rotunda came alive with gunfire and screams. Twenty-four men in web gear and balaclavas burst out of the corridors with submachineguns in hand. The President and the Speaker went down in a pool of blood; the others parted in terror as the bodyguards belatedly scrambled to their feet. The attackers turned on anyone moving towards them and not away; one of the gunmen went down with a scream as a bullet found its mark in his throat, but the rest kept going and laid waste to the surprised bodyguards.

Seri braced herself for part two—and the whole building shook as a bomb in the House chamber finally detonated. It wouldn't kill everyone in there, but it would kill most of the legislators—and it would do its work well enough. And Meyers would be safe.

But now it was her turn—and as more bodyguards and soldiers in the green uniform of the Earth Alliance Army picked their way into the Rotunda under heavy fire, Seri sprang out of hiding with a drawn assault rifle and gunned down two of the masked men before they could respond. The rest backed away as the Alliance struck back with a hail of bullets, and one man with camouflage pants ducked away into a side office. Seri hurled a smoke grenade into the gunmen's midst—and then dove after their retreating comrade.

She flung the door shut behind her and the man in front of her whipped around in terror, still trying to reload his weapon. Seri raised a silenced pistol in her left hand and shot him in the shoulder; he screamed in pain and pitched back, his own rifle clattering to the floor, and she stepped forward and put the gun to his chest.

"Y-You tricked us!" he cried, his hand clenched over his shoulder. "You said you'd be here to help—!"

"We didn't trick you," she answered. "We used you. And now we're done."

Four gunshots later, Seri turned away, pocketed the handgun, burst back out the door, and fired a volley of bullets into the backs of two more unsuspecting Resistance fighters. The Alliance soldiers were moving in under cover of smoke. The Resistance gunmen were being killed to a man. All was proceeding as planned.

—

**Heaven's Base, Iceland**

"Again, for those just joining us, the latest reports from local hospitals indicate that over two hundred legislators and government officials are confirmed dead in this apparent terrorist attack, including President Vasserot, Speaker Rose..."

Lord Djibril stared darkly at the screen in front of him, as the newscaster droned on about dead legislators, mysterious black-clad gunmen, and a constitutional crisis. The news cameras had courteously shown a clear and bloody image of the dead President Vasserot, with Speaker Rose's corpse slumped next to him, before someone had had the good taste to cut away. And if Vasserot and Rose were dead, then that meant succession fell to the president _pro tem_ of the Atlantic Federation Senate.

Djibril's eyes narrowed. Robert Meyers.

He keyed in a frequency to Althea Crater. He had allowed Meyers to play his bloody game and kill off his own colleagues in the Atlantic Federation Senate long enough, but now this little man was meddling with powers he did not comprehend. And that would have to end.

"Misa," Djibril said, "I'm sure you're aware of what's going on in Washington right now."

"Yes sir," she answered. "Should I arrange for Meyers' disposal?"

"Not yet. We need the casualty reports to come in first, so we know which of the surviving officials need to be eliminated and which can be installed as placeholders until a more suitable candidate emerges." He scowled. "But I want you in Washington and I want you ready to intervene as soon as possible. Meyers has gone too far this time."

"Very well, sir," Misa answered. The screen darkened and Djibril sat back, reaching for his glass for a sip of wine. Perhaps he would have to break out the liquor—but in the meantime, he had a few phone calls to make.

—

**Terminal, Debris Belt**

Meyrin Hawke sat dumbfounded with Oshida and Copland in one of Terminal's small conference rooms, all eyes on the screen before them and the news feed coming in. A justice was swearing in a grim-looking man the on-screen graphics identified as Robert Meyers, who quite solemnly took the oath and assumed the office of the Atlantic Federation's President.

"We don't know much about him," Oshida said. "He's a consummate politician. Only believes the sun rises in the east if that's what polls the best."

"Oh no, he has his beliefs," Copland said with a snort, and all eyes turned towards him. "He just keeps them locked up tight." He glanced at the room's other two occupants. "I can tell you he never thought much of the Earth Alliance or of Lord Djibril. He thought the Atlantic Federation should be keeping the Alliance at arm's length. But he was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. I can only imagine he did this sordidly."

Meyrin frowned at the screen, as Meyers began to give a solemn speech promising to bring order, security, and justice. "What does this mean for us?"

"For us, it means that we need to win at Althea." Copland gestured to the screen. "MacIntyre needs us to take Althea Crater so that we can show off all its horrors to the world. That will give Meyers the political cover he needs to withdraw the Atlantic Federation from the Earth Alliance and turn against Djibril and the Phantom Pain. Then we can turn the world against them, get rid of them, and turn our attention towards ZAFT."

Oshida shook his head, but said nothing, and Meyrin looked dubiously towards Copland. "What if the rest of the world doesn't go along with us?"

"That," Copland said darkly, "is where the risk comes in."

—

"I said I'll do it," grumbled Sting Oakley in the _Minerva_'s crew lounge, glowering up at Athrun Zala. "I didn't say I'd like it."

"I'm just saying, it'll...be a lot of triggers," Athrun answered. "You know what they do at Althea."

"Yeah, I do. Look, I know you're just trying to look out for me, but it's not a problem. Really. I'll deal."

Athrun frowned. "If you say so."

As Athrun took his leave, Sting hung his head with a sigh. Of course he'd _deal_, but marching into the heart of the Earth Alliance's Extended program would take a toll on him, no doubt. The memories were already trickling back of his time at Lodonia. The cage matches, the physical training, the manipulation, the naked terror that coursed through the place...he shuddered at the thought. He had made friends there in spite of it all—and the Alliance, to toughen him for their service, had made him kill them.

But he was free. He always had to remind himself of that whenever the vortex of Lodonia threatened to drag him under. He was free. Captain Lee had seen to that—and with this lease on life, he could do something with his life now. And here they were, marching into Althea Crater, into the mouth of madness where the Extended were tortured into servants of the Alliance. But he could come here with a new purpose—that of a rescuer.

That, after all, was what he'd promised Captain Lee. That he would do something with his life. And he could think of no better way to honor that man's sacrifice at Daedalus than by freeing the children that he hadn't been able to save.

—

Shinn Asuka noted with a frown that he had set off something of an emotional storm within Riika Sheder, as they both drifted down the halls of Terminal—and not all the emotions swirling around her were the ones he expected.

"Well," she said quietly, "that certainly sounds like him."

Shinn let out a sigh. "I didn't really _want_ to kill him," he said, "but, well, you know Mare. Hated my guts even to the end."

Riika shrugged. "Don't beat yourself up over it. If he was really the way you say he was, it probably would've..." She trailed off for a moment, choosing her words. "Probably would've done more harm than good trying to talk sense into him anyway."

"I wasn't even going to bother with _that_," scoffed Shinn. "You remember Mare. You didn't talk sense into him, you waited out his tantrums."

"Well, that's true..."

"Besides, he finally got to pilot the Impulse," Shinn added with a shrug, "and he finally got to fight me."

Riika frowned. "That's not really the point."

"No, but it's all I got."

They rounded a corner. "Well, who else did you run into on Earth? Anyone else we would've known?"

Shinn thought back—bitterly, to the last days spent on Gigafloat, to the feeling of leaving behind Malchio to die as they roared into space, to the all-consuming cloud of evil at _Ame-no-Mihashira_. He looked back at Riika. She was always too nice for that sort of thing.

"Not a soul."

—

"Well, here it is," Lowe Gear said as grandiloquently as he could. "Couldn't do as much as I would've wanted, since it was short notice and all, but it'll do ya well enough."

The hangar doors hissed open—and Trojan Noiret nearly jumped for joy at the sight on the other side. A white, black, and green mobile suit with a four-pronged flight pack on its back stood at the other side of the hangar, with the green flaming T insignia stamped onto its left shoulder and the familiar battleaxe beam rifle clamped onto its left-hand hip armor.

"I started with a Civvie Astray chassis and packed on that old flight pack the Red used to use," Lowe went on. "But you said you wanted it tuned for hand-to-hand combat, right? So—"

"It's awesome!" Trojan cried, and immediately jumped forward and lunged towards the silent, waiting Gundam Astray Green Frame Kai. Lowe watched him go with a shrug.

"Eh, whatcha gonna do," he said, and turned towards the person on his other side. "And as long as I'm playin' Santa Claus here, it looks like you've been on the nice list this year too."

At his side, Emily blinked in surprise. "But...I already have a mobile suit—"

"Oh, don't be modest. Come on."

A few minutes later, Lowe was eagerly directing a pair of mechanics in opening up a wide metal crate—and Emily, floating next to the ever-enthusiastic Junk Guild tech, watched in surprise as the lid swung open to reveal two weapons packed inside. One was a long rifle with two canisters slung underneath a metallic blue barrel; the other was a short, stubby shield that housed a long, segmented, sharp-edged whip.

Lowe gestured proudly at the two weapons. "Compliments of Dr. Freeman himself," he said, "the 'Dragon's Fire' beam launcher and the 'Dragon's Tail' heat rod. The Dragon's Fire has twice the range of a normal beam rifle and three times the power in exchange for half the rate of fire, so you'll have to be smart about shots. The Dragon's Tail has a laser-cut reinforced edge and it has superheating and cooling coils inside, plus electrodes, so you can deliver shocks or melt things or whatever, and the edge is sharp enough to cut through anything short of Phase Shift. And," he raised a finger, "it has a beam shield on top."

Emily frowned. More new weapons, more alterations to her style. "I guess I have manuals to read now?"

"You know it."

"Well," she glanced over at Trojan, still giddily examining the Green Frame Kai, "then I guess I'll get started. Thanks, Lowe, I know you don't really like making these kind of things."

Lowe merely shrugged. "Eh, ya do what ya gotta. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go have a chat with your boyfriend over there about _his_ new toy." And with that, Lowe pushed off towards the Green Frame Kai.

Emily looked back down at her own mobile suit's two new weapons and heaved a sigh.

—

**June 24th, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Ivan Danilov spent comparatively little time in his office on the _Charlemagne_, he had often noted. Much of his time was spent touring the ship, making sure people were doing their jobs, interacting with his crew, handing out orders on the bridge...but of late, he had turned his office into a place of sanctuary for his troubled mind.

And now it was more troubled than ever. He had slept poorly the past couple days, as the image of children forced to butcher each other in a cage match to the satisfaction of steely-eyed Phantom Pain officers and amused-looking soldiers with assault rifles and body armor burned itself onto his soul. The vividness outshone the other horror stories he had in his mind, even the cold and detached feeling he'd had at Volgograd and the madness of having to hunt down the _Minerva_ while ZAFT slaughtered people on the Moon.

"So, I have to ask," he said quietly, and glanced over his desk at the other person in the room, "how are we supposed to defend a place like this?"

In the other chair, Vera looked even worse than he did. She had gone on their little tour too, and the nightmares that haunted Danilov's sleep had found hers as well. "What are you suggesting, sir?"

Danilov slumped back in his chair. He had no idea what he was suggesting. MacIntyre's words and the deeds of that ZAFT submarine's captain at Banadiya flashed back into his mind. Was that really the only option left?

"Well," he said, "what _should_ we do?" He leaned forward heavily. "Sit there and let the Phantom Pain keep doing all that?"

"Of course not," Vera answered, "but how? Who's on our side?"

Danilov sat back. There was only one answer he could think of—an answer so steeped in irony it almost made him sick.

—

Someone had arranged for the _Charlemagne_'s officers, including its mobile suit pilots, to have a tour of Althea Crater and its Extended facilities. Someone had evidently thought that such a thing would be of great interest to mobile suit pilots. Someone, in other words, was a horrible person.

But Althea Crater was full of those and there was a reason why this place had been dubbed the "fortress of sin" or something like that by the regular forces—the ones who had no idea what went on here and succumbed to all kinds of fanciful tales. The cadets at Volkov had done the same, telling horror stories to keep each other from sleeping and make the next day of training all the more hellish. Erin Gedelberg had never really taken them seriously. Surely the Alliance couldn't do something so inhuman, right?

She hung her head as she heard the door slide open and saw Grey and Merau step into the observation hallway she had chosen for her brooding.

"Hey," Grey started, with an awkward glance at Merau, "there you are. You alright? You seemed pretty upset when, well, you know..."

"I-I'm alright," she started, and slowly got back to her feet, "it's just, in that one room..." She squeezed her eyes shut as the memories came back and the tears threatened to flow. "She...looked like my sister..."

Erin looked back up as Grey put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and then the wall cracked open and she flung herself into his chest with a sob. Grey and Merau exchanged a knowing look and let her weep.

—

A long row of Calamity Gundam units in the black and red colors of the Phantom Pain stretched down the hangar. Shams Coza cringed at the sight; Gundams were supposed to be _unique_ and even though this had only been a limited production run of a tweaked version of the original X131, it still wasn't cool. Anymore like this and he'd lose the franchise.

He glanced over at Mudie, staring disinterestedly at it all. Of course, this sort of tour was a lot better than the one the base officers had offered. Shams had skillfully finagled his way out of _that_. He, after all, was a veteran of the Phantom Pain, and he'd spent enough time at the likes of Lodonia. The last thing he needed was the visceral horror that any mentally and emotionally sound human felt at the sight of children in a cage gutting each other like turkeys.

"Well, their problem," he muttered. Mudie glanced at him. "The other pilots. Maynard's little gang. They went on the tour Bancroft was offering."

"Oh," Mudie said, and her flesh seemed to crawl. "That was stupid of them."

"Incredibly." He turned his attention back towards the row of Calamities. "So what are those for?" Mudie shrugged. "I mean, they're totally ripping off my schtick. I was there first."

"Whatever."

Mudie headed off on her own and left behind a frowning Shams. It was getting damn near _impossible_ to engage her in conversation, and he could only wonder what was going on in that pretty little head of hers.

—

The dock where waited the dark blue and gold hull of the _Witch's Hammer_ rang with the sounds of work as the crews prepared it for a sortie. Mirage Colloid was a useful thing for a force that styled itself as a bunch of ninjas.

Misa Tsunomi watched the final stages of the refit imperiously from her observation deck, arms crossed, mind racing. She had about a day to gather her team and put together a plan to eliminate Robert Meyers. No doubt the new President of the Atlantic Federation would have a ludicrous degree of new security, but if a Mirage Colloid-equipped battleship approached and blasted the White House or something while the President was there, well, there wasn't much they could do about _that_.

She scowled behind her mask. Of course, she had suggested to Lord Djibril that she should destroy him months ago. She would have done it unhesitatingly. Anything to serve him better. But he had been content to let Meyers play his little games and only destroy him when he became a threat; and then ZAFT showed up and distracted him, and now it was all falling apart.

From the shadows, she would have to support her master again. That was how it had always been. And now, with his grand empire disintegrating...

Down below, the workers loaded her Nero Blitz into the _Witch's Hammer_'s hangar and turned their attention towards the ship's four gleaming new N Windam N units. With the same ninja-like characteristics as the N Dagger N but the successful Windam's frame and improved maneuverability, the N Windams would surely slice through Washington's mobile suit defenses. They could do this, and then track down whatever other officials needed to be killed, until a suitable puppet was reached in the line of succession.

Anything that the master required.

—

"It's a ZAFT prototype," said Lieutenant General Hans von Schadt of the mobile suit before them. Gerhardt and Irene shared a look and both took in the majestic sweep of a mobile suit with a monstrous backpack, folded wings and cannons on its back and hips, and the beam rifle and red shield of the old Strike Gundam. "X08A Liberty. Prototype for the Justice and Freedom." He pointed to the giant backpack. "They derived the Justice's subflight lifter from that, and they tested prototypes of the weapons for the Freedom."

Gerhardt arched an eyebrow. "The Freedom?"

"Oh, indeed," Schadt said with a proud grin. "It's still a formidable machine even six years later. Can hold its own in a fight and everything."

The machine was no mystery to Gerhardt von Oldendorf. Captured shortly after the Junius War, the Liberty Gundam had donated parts and concepts to development of the Alliance's latest and greatest machines, like the mighty Crusader Gundam. And Schadt's boasting wasn't completely off the mark, as the Liberty had held up well in combat trials against small Resistance units. But the _Minerva_ had new, cutting-edge mobile suits. This relic of the Valentine War couldn't possibly help.

Relics. That's all these things were. Relics and atrocities, seething in the blackest pits of Althea Crater. Gerhardt looked around disdainfully as Schadt launched into a discourse about the Liberty's capture. This wasn't the place to find the future.

No, Emily would do that for him.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

Messiah's control room was silent as the reports streamed in. Political unrest was bubbling over in the Atlantic Federation. Most of its government officials and legislators were dead; the survivors, cowed by a ferocious terrorist attack that had claimed the majority of their colleagues, had all but ceded their legal authority to the new President. Robert Meyers could mold the Atlantic Federation any way he wished.

And that was the real rub. Already the rumors were flying that President Meyers wanted a fundamental renegotiation of the Atlantic Federation's role in the Earth Alliance. His ambivalence towards Djibril and the Alliance and Blue Cosmos was well known, and now that he had the power, well, that was just music to Valentine Sunogachi's ears.

She smiled as the pundits descended like hawks onto the new president's latest press conference. Robert Meyers was most likely a cunning individual in his own right, but with this new schism among her enemies, she had all the opportunity she needed.

At her side, Kira frowned. "What are they trying to accomplish here...?"

"It's to be expected," Valentine said with a shrug. "Build an empire on the backs of ambitious people and sooner or later you have to deal with their ambitions." She smiled; lucky for her she'd had the last ambitious person of _hers_ executed months ago. "In the meantime, Mr. Meyers here is handing us a wonderful opportunity. With the Alliance so focused on conflict with itself, we'll be able to accelerate our work schedule. What would have taken weeks can be done in a matter of days."

Kira arched an eyebrow. "And if they don't start fighting with each other?"

"Oh, how could they not? Meyers wouldn't have murdered his way to the top if he was just going to kowtow to Djibril."

"Then shouldn't we let them destroy each other?"

Valentine grinned. "We'll do better than that."

—

Unit Zero-Two clutched her shoulders and struggled against the images in her mind as she tried to sleep in her bunk. It was a good thing they had left her to her own devices in here, now that Commander Ehrmacht's task force was so much scrap metal orbiting the Earth, because she had _issues_ to deal with.

And it was all thanks to that damned brat. Emily. How had she managed to do that? What Zero-Two assumed to be every emotion and memory she'd associated with her mother, the kindly, frail woman who couldn't do much as her mother but did what she could, had come crashing down on her in one concentrated bombardment of feeling. And worst of all, she thought as she thrashed around onto her other side, it felt _familiar_.

It explained, at least, why Emily was so insistent on seeing Zero-Two as her mother. And it was a rather unexpected way for Vice Marshal Yamato's decision to use her to backfire. But she knew who she was. She was Unit Zero-Two, the perfected version of the unstable and wayward Zero-One. A weapon more perfectly honed and skillfully crafted could not be found in the Cosmic Era.

And yet those images stayed with her still. That was Emily's mother; that was _her_, the same heart, somewhere underneath all that military training and honing and crafting. That was what Emily saw, and it made her sick to think that somehow her entire life might have been built upon a vast bedrock of falsehood.

She clenched her fingers around her shoulders and blew out her breath. The images would have to be driven out. Whatever she was to some misguided soul, she was Unit Zero-Two—and she would not be bent and twisted into something else.

—

**Terminal, Debris Belt**

There were many reasons why Shinn Asuka did his best to avoid Aoma Vedlow. One of those reasons was floating in front of him, just out the observation deck and towards one of Terminal's many hidden hangars.

The sight of the Impulse Gundam brought all kinds of memories back to Shinn's mind. He had grown up in that mobile suit, met Stella, saved her from the Alliance, done battle with his own friends...his mind went back to his days on this ship in the uniform of a ZAFT Red, and his days on the _Kasselheim_, with old friends and with something more.

_But now you have a cooler better Gundam!_ a voice piped up. Shinn blinked in surprise and glanced over his shoulder—and there was Lunamaria, her ZAFT Red uniform nearly glowing in the darkness. _Really, you spend a lot more time on this brooding crap than you should. It's kinda unhealthy._

"Thanks, Doctor Luna," Shinn grumbled.

_So what's got you all emo this time?_

Shinn nodded towards the Impulse. "Memories. Seeing that thing reminds me of a lot of people. Like Kika." He paused. "And Lacus."

_Why Lacus?_

"I first met her when I was piloting that thing. And down there," Shinn nodded in the vague direction of the Earth, "we were told that we have to come up here to do what Lacus Clyne did in the last two wars. Stop the madness before it kills everyone. Y'know," his shoulders drooped, "what we were doing last time."

_Well, don't you have to? I mean, everyone _is_ kind of crazy these days._

"They always were. Someone just keeps giving them all guns."

Luna seemed to sigh in annoyance. _I just don't want to see you on my side of the fence anytime soon, Shinn. You've got too much to do here._

"I know."

—

All things considered, Lily Thevalley should have been walking on air. The mobile suit in front of her was the resurrection of Emily's old Twilight Gundam, repaired and refit to replace the rarely used anti-ship sword with a second long-range cannon. Firmly attached to the rear skirt armor was a much larger skirt that held four DRAGOON units. And with the Phase Shift active, it was clear that someone had at long last remembered that she liked her mobile suits red.

The Twilight Gundam Cortana, however, had one rather important hitch.

"They're not saying you're short, Lily," Emily protested, as Lily stewed with arms crossed in front of the crimson machine. "It's a history reference. 'Cortana' is a sword that was used by a big important hero somewhere and got cut down so someone else could use it."

"Yeah," Lily groused, "so they're saying I'm short _and_ they're saying I'm a wimp!"

"No they're not," Emily sighed.

She glanced up towards the new mobile suit and felt a twinge of reminiscence at the sight of her old machine. The poor Twilight Gundam had carried her through so much, it felt a little strange to be handing it down to someone else now. But hopefully this machine and its legacy would extend its protective power to Lily too. Emily hated to think what might happen if it didn't.

"It's really not that big a deal," she said. "If you don't like it, you can change the name. I did." She shrugged. "They called my Gundam 'Gabriel.' I don't. It's not a problem."

"Whatever," Lily grumbled, and turned away disdainfully. Emily rolled her eyes and looked back into the eyes of her old and faithful warhorse.

_Well,_ she mused, _you'll just have to be as good to her as you were to me._

—

"So," said Riika Sheder with a skeptically raised eyebrow, "you're the infamous Stella Loussier."

The infamous Stella Loussier looked up at the sound of her name, a glob of instant ramen noodles waving like tentacles out from her mouth. She blinked at the brown-haired girl in glasses and a red ZAFT uniform, and her confusion didn't get any better as the girl lost her composure and started giggling.

"Wha...?" she started, and then remembered she was eating, and took the time to swallow her food. "What is it...?"

Riika tried to stifle her laughter. "_You're_ what made Shinn go _AWOL_ on us?" Stella looked around and could not find what was so funny, but Riika managed to compose herself as Stella worked up the nerve to ask. "S-Sorry, it's just, the noodles hanging out of your mouth..."

Stella glanced down at her Styrofoam cup of instant ramen. "Stella was eating dinner..."

"I know, I know." Riika took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's try this again." She put a hand out. "Hi, I'm Riika Sheder."

Stella hesitantly shook her hand. "Who...?"

"I was Shinn's friend at Armory 1," Riika supplied, "and I used to pilot the Gaia."

"The Gaia?"

"Yeah, the, uh...the one you stole."

Stella frowned. "The Gaia's gone."

"I know. Don't worry about it, it was getting old." Riika looked around awkwardly. "So, um, I guess you've been Shinn's friend for a while, huh?" Stella nodded slowly. "Cool! So, um..."

Stella offered a smile. "If Riika was Shinn's friend," she said, "then she's Stella's friend too."

That brought a grin to Riika's face. "I can live with that."

—

"I was in FAITH, yes," admitted Rau Le Creuset, "but I'm sure you understand that Gilbert Dullindal always played his cards close to his vest. I'm sure you were treated the same way. The Chairman only fed you the information you needed to know, always seemed to be playing another angle...?

Meyrin frowned. She'd managed to corner the enigmatic masked ace here in a side hallway in the labyrinthine interior of Terminal. No way was she letting this opportunity slip through her fingers.

"I remember that," she said, "but I'm asking about what _you_ did during the war."

Rau shrugged. "The only thing of note that I did during the Junius War was joining the battle at Cyprus. Covered the Muslim League's retreat during that debacle at Dhekelia." He frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"I've heard some rumors that you were up to less than savory business during the war," Meyrin said. Rau only grinned.

"War itself is unsavory business."

"The rumors say you went further than that."

"And what _do_ the rumors say, captain?"

Meyrin straightened up. "If it's not true, then it's unimportant," she said. "What is important is that I need to know if I can trust you."

"And why would you not?"

A tense silence reigned between them for a moment. "Can I trust you?"

Rau grinned back. "You can always trust me, captain. I think I've demonstrated my unimpeachable credentials ample times over the course of my time on the _Minerva_. I'm sorry someone distrusts me enough to go spreading these nasty rumors, but," he shrugged, "that's not a problem for me to work out."

Silence descended over them again. "I suppose so," Meyrin said. "I'll see you back at the ship." And with a curt nod, she excused herself and disappeared around a corner.

—

**June 25th, CE 77 - Resistance **_**Eternal**_**-class cruiser **_**Alexandria**_**, en route to the Moon**

His entire council of advisors had argued against this. So had Callista. Suicide, they'd called it. Courting disaster. But Joseph Copland knew he could not be absent for this battle. The leader of the Resistance, even if he had not unveiled himself to the public, had to be here—to spur on the troops and to swoop in and pick up the pieces once the battle was complete.

Of course, as the _Alexandria_ drove for the Moon in the middle of the Resistance fleet, Copland knew he was throwing the dice. Forty-seven ships and nearly three hundred and fifty mobile suits, including the mighty _Minerva_ and the dreaded Vedlow Fleet, were in this armada. Intelligence put Althea Crater's defenses as roughly half that number of ships, roughly four hundred mobile suits, all kinds of untold horrors connected to the Extended program, and an extensive array of defensive emplacements built into the lunar surface. It was a formidable target for attack.

He glanced over at the _Agamemnon_-class carrier to the _Alexandria_'s starboard side. Of course, Admiral Buckley over there on the _Pennsylvania_ knew what he was doing. His wing of the Alliance's fleet had come the closest to the ZAFT space fortress at Jachin Due, and he knew what he was up against in an Alliance lunar base. He had helped design the defenses at Ptolemaeus—defenses that had proven useless against the might of the GENESIS, but valuable experience all the same.

And yet still, they really did have no idea what they would be fighting. Those who went to Althea Crater never returned. This was where the Alliance manufactured its Extended, and the fearsome mobile weapons with which it armed them. And here he was, throwing the majority of the Resistance's entire space fleet into the fray. If this battle should fail—if Kenaf were right about MacIntyre—if something were to go wrong...

He shook his head. Those thoughts were not thoughts worth having. Copland fixed his eyes ahead, towards the Moon.

—

**Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"Forty-seven warships," said Hans von Schadt with a sigh. The control room at Althea Crater was seething with activity. The defenses had to be activated and reinforcements had to be summoned, but Schadt himself felt no particular worry. Let them come. The Alliance created weapons here the likes of which those puny minds of the Resistance could not dream.

"General," a voice spoke up, and the old, square face of Rear Admiral Connell appeared on the monitor. Schadt blinked in annoyance at the man in the gray uniform of the Space Force. "My fleet is only half the size of theirs. What do you want me to do?"

"Well for God's sake, get out of sight," Schadt scoffed, "and quit worrying. Just keep your ships low to the surface and be prepared to ambush them as they attack." He smiled. "Althea Crater's sleeves are full of surprises for impertinent attackers. They will have no idea what hit them."

Connell arched an eyebrow. "What are you planning?"

"Well, I was just thinking, it's been a long time since we gave the Doll-Maker a chance to stretch his legs..."

At that, understanding dawned across Connell's face and he slowly smiled. "Understood."

The screen went dark and Schadt tapped another key. "Marakov, this is General Schadt. I'm authorizing the release of Subject 0984 in Destroy Unit Epsilon 1." He grinned. "Tell Ash not to hold back."

—

To be continued...


	40. Phase 40: For Our Freedom and Yours

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 40 - For Our Freedom and Yours

—

**June 25th, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"The generals of old were at their most respectable when they led from the front," sniffed Hans von Schadt. He closed the seals of his Alliance flight suit and sat back in his cockpit seat, fixing the adjutant on the auxiliary screen with a meaningful look. "And I do mean to establish myself as respectable."

The adjutant looked unconvinced. "With all due respect, sir, the generals of old who led from the front had a bad habit of _dying_ on the front," he said. "And a dead commander really isn't what we need right now."

"Come now, major," Schadt scoffed, and he tapped his knuckle against the cockpit console. "The generals of old who led from the front had a remarkable vulnerability to bullets and such. I do not." His confident grin vanished. "Now. Keep the defensive line tight and make sure the enemy remains in range of our mounted defenses. And keep pestering Arzachel and Daedalus for reinforcements. They haven't acquiesced yet, but once we have these Resistance scum on the run, they'll think twice. Is that clear?" The officer nodded. "Very well. Then I will launch."

The screen went dark, and then the eyes of the Liberty Gundam lit up with a bright green flash and the mobile suit stepped forward from its hangar brace. Schadt smiled, confidence surging again.

—

Something strange was up ahead.

Shinn Asuka frowned at the feeling of human presences in a spot where the sensors showed nothing. He knew what _that_ meant: someone was using Mirage Colloid. But they couldn't hide _that_ easily.

"Courtney, Riika, enemies up ahead," he said. On the Zulfiqar Gundam's flanks, the Proto Chaos and Riika's dark blue Blaze ZAKU Phantom turned their monoeyes towards him.

"I don't see anything," Riika protested.

"Just trust me," Shinn said. "Everyone, break formation—_now!_"

The Zulfiqar, the Kali, and the rest of the mobile suits all promptly scattered—as a pulsing wave of beam fire emanated out of nowhere and coursed through the space they had just occupied. Shinn darted up over the blast and fired back with his long-range cannon—and with a flicker of light, the veil vanished and the vast blue and gold hull of an _Archangel_-class battleship materialized out of nothingness.

"What the—where were _they_ hiding?" Riika sputtered.

"Mirage Colloid," grumbled Courtney. "All units, fall back—"

"Not yet," Shinn said. "Get around them and keep going." He flung himself back and activated the beam shield as another set of beams came flashing out of the darkness.

Up ahead, the Nero Blitz and four green Windams with thruster vanes stretching off their backs in an X-shaped configuration charged forward, with another squad of N Dagger Ns on their tails. The _Archangel_-class fired again and parted the waves of Resistance mobile suits before it.

"Well aren't _they_ in a hurry!" Riika grumbled; the ZAKU dove to the side as the battleship's railguns opened fire. "Where are they going...?"

"Oh no, I recognize these guys," Shinn grunted. The Zulfiqar landed with a crash on the lunar surface and brandished its sword. "These are the Night Tigers. Lord Djibril's personal assassins. And it looks like they don't wanna stick around and play."

True to form, the Nero Blitz opened up the launchers on its right arm and unleashed a withering beam gun salvo that forced the Zulfiqar and its allies back. Shinn vaulted over the Nero Blitz's head; one of the Windams swept in with a long beam saber in hand and slammed it down against the Zulfiqar's sword. Shinn flung the green mobile suit back, but the Nero Blitz lunged into his path and swept at him with the two massive grappling arms on its back.

The Kali Gundam came barreling in out of nowhere and rammed the Nero Blitz aside with its shoulder, then darted backward with a burst of fire from its beam rifle. Shinn took the opportunity to back away.

"Riika, Courtney," he said, "you guys keep going and leave this ship to—"

Yet another wave of beam fire interrupted him and put the Zulfiqar on the defensive—and this time there were three familiar presences.

"Oh for Christ's sake," he grumbled, "one at a time, you assholes!"

The Zulfiqar wheeled around, anti-ship sword in hand, to face the oncoming Crusader, Vanguard, and Artemis Gundams. Shinn ground his teeth.

"And, uh, who are these guys?" Riika asked.

"Change of plans," Shinn grunted. "Stella, you stick with Riika and Courtney, and _you_ guys deal with the Night Tigers. Me," he narrowed his eyes, "I have some unfinished business with those three."

With a flash, the Zulfiqar hefted its sword and charged.

—

"First defense node coming up in sixty seconds," the wingman's voice said. Aoma Vedlow glanced around the cockpit screens of the Blast Impulse Gundam. Her poor old Impulse was starting to show its age, but she would simply have to make up the deficit herself, with skill. Her pilots were counting on her, after all. Even the most grizzled and experienced of her veterans hadn't done something _this_ foolhardy.

She glanced up ahead at the first defense node. Althea had clustered its defenses around particular strategic points—and the first one, nestled in the side of a cliff and topped by a tower with a single Gottfried cannon on top, was rapidly approaching. Aoma steeled herself and threw open the throttle; the Blast Impulse rocketed ahead, the guns up ahead began to fire, and Aoma let instinct take over as she guided her machine through the forest of beams and bullets.

A squad of Windams sprang out of hiding near the tower and showered the attackers with beam fire, driving the other mobile suits back. The Impulse itself plunged ahead and flung itself down to the lunar surface, then skirted to the side as the Windams advanced. Aoma launched a volley of missiles forward; the defense point's four CIWS emplacements sliced them out of the air. The smoke billowed up—and behind its cover, Aoma leveled off the two Kerberos beam cannons and opened fire. Two red beams sliced through the smoke and smashed into the base of the tower, and with a thundering explosion, it disappeared in a column of fire—just long enough for the other mobile suits to sweep in and destroy the four thunderstruck Windams.

"The node is down," Aoma said, "all units converge—"

Another wave of fire cut her off and she threw the Impulse back to avoid it. The smoke burst apart as another squad of Windams charged with beam rifles blazing. Aoma backed away behind her shield, searching for an opening—

But instead of attacking, the Windams darted apart and then disappeared in a blinding blaze of beam fire—and the world shook as two Gundams landed hard on the dusty ground and glanced back at the Impulse.

"Well," said Sting Oakley with a smirk, "not leaving much for us to do, are you?"

"Yeah, let us have some fun," added Auel Neider.

Aoma tried not to frown. Two of the _Minerva_'s fancy new Gundams showing up to help her was supposed to be a good thing, after all. "If you two are here to assist, then I'm putting you both on point," she said.

Auel grinned back. "Y'know, being on point is usually a bitch up the ass, but this time? I think I can hang with it."

"Good. Then let's go."

—

Claws glowing and eyes flickering furiously, the Zamzazar mobile armor barreled into battle with a withering barrage from its beam cannons. On the other end of the battlefield, Rau Le Creuset smirked at the sight. So far the Judgment had acquitted itself well against the small change—but now it was time to fight a _real_ opponent.

The Zamzazar flung itself forward; Rau sent the Judgment into a steep dive, then yanked back on the controls and went skimming along the ground. The mobile armor followed with a hail of beam fire, sending the Judgment spinning away for safety. Rau eyed the oncoming machine carefully, then launched the King DRAGOONs and deployed the smaller Pawn DRAGOONs—and with a blinding flash of light, he spun a web of beam fire around the mobile armor that sent it skittering backward despite its positron reflector.

Not completely intimidated, the mobile armor pitched back and let loose the full fury of all four of its Gamzatov cannons. Rau ducked aside and his DRAGOONs darted apart; the Zamzazar charged again, one of its claws raised—

An instant later, a beam saber appeared in the Judgment's left hand, and it swung the blade up to deflect the Zamzazar's crushing blow. The DRAGOONs swarmed again and pelted the Zamzazar with blasts, and the Judgment backed away to pound the mobile armor with a full blast from the Gundam's mounted beam guns. The Zamzazar seemed to falter under the relentless bombardment, and Rau grinned at the twinge of fear he felt from the mobile armor's cockpit as he pressed the attack.

—

A quartet of missiles hit home as the Aurora Gundam shot over one of Althea's defense nodes in its mobile armor mode. Several of the CIWS, missile launchers, and anti-air beam guns vanished in the blast and the Gottfried cannon swung around to track the Gundam—and then the Celestial Justice seized its opening to leap out from behind the cover of a nearby ridge and blow the whole thing apart with a beam rifle barrage.

Viveka paused a moment to scan the battlefield. The way was more or less clear from here to the base itself, but for the Alliance defenders—and up ahead, a _Nelson_-class battleship was relentlessly spewing firepower at the harried Resistance attackers. Their own ships were still hanging back and bombarding the base from afar, but this battle wasn't going to be won in a shooting match.

"The _Winchester_'s mobile suits are moving up to support us," Athrun said, "but we've still gotta get from here to the space dock."

"Well, that should be fun," Viveka said. Her sensors squealed; the two Gundams rocketed apart just as a storm of beam fire came pounding down into the lunar surface between them, and the world shook from the thrusters of two charging Euclid mobile armors.

The Celestial Justice lunged towards them and forced them both to split up with a barrage of fire. "I'll take these two," Athrun said, "you deal with their friend."

"What—their friend?"

Yet another barrage came down and Viveka snapped her attention back towards the black sky—and the blue and white Gundam roaring out of it.

"Yeah," Athrun said, "that thing."

Viveka frowned at the sight of the oncoming mobile suit and transformed her own machine accordingly, and charged forward as the Gundam opened fire again.

—

The Gundam Eclipse flung itself towards the dusty lunar surface as a storm of beam fire flashed by overhead. Emily ground her teeth as the Gundam came crashing down and then ducked back to the side—just as two Windams shot by. She swung up the Dragon's Fire launcher and pulled the trigger, and a pulsing, crackling column of sky-blue energy lanced out of the barrel and wiped out both mobile suits in a single blast.

Emily blinked down at the gun. "That was easy..."

As if on cue, the fire started up again and the Eclipse ducked down beneath a convenient ridge. Emily scanned the sky up ahead and cringed at the sight of five familiar mobile suits streaking toward her.

"Not those guys again..."

The ground shook and Emily glanced to her side as the Green Frame Kai and Twilight Cortana landed next to her. Lily put on a cheeky grin as the red Gundam hefted its beam rifle.

"Well, if you don't wanna kill 'em, I will! I have four DRAGOONs, y'know, that basically means I'm like five mobile suits in one."

Emily frowned. "No it doesn't—"

Once again the ground trembled—but this time it was from the base. Emily grimaced at the sight of a huge and all too familiar shadow lumbering out of the smoke from a hidden hangar in the cliff wall.

"Well, how about this," Trojan grunted. "We'll deal with your old friends here, and you go kill that Destroy."

"Yeah, you're the super ace here," Lily added. "Go play hero!"

Emily rolled her eyes. "Thanks, guys. Be careful against those ones, they work together really well."

The Eclipse vaulted into the air and rocketed past the _Charlemagne_'s five Luna Project mobile suits with a blast from its Voiture Lumiere. The five mobile suits turned towards her, only to be put on the defensive by a sudden rush from the Green Frame and Cortana. Emily fixed her gaze on the Destroy and reached back into the vaults of her memory for how to fight one of these things. All she had to do was get close—

The Destroy opened fire with the Aufprall Dreizhen cannons on its back; Emily yelped in surprise and jammed the controls aside, and the Eclipse barely dodged the blast. She hefted the Dragon's Fire again.

Up ahead, the Destroy transformed into its mobile suit mode—and faster than Emily thought possible for something so gigantic, it rushed forward, ignited a beam saber from its right wrist, and brought the blade crashing down against the Eclipse's beam shield.

"Oh, so they sent the Angel of Death to fight me!" cackled someone's voice; Emily blinked at the image on her auxiliary screen of a masked man in an elaborate red and white flight suit. "Isn't that ironic! All this time I thought you were on _my_ side!"

Emily frowned. _Another lunatic with a giant robot? Haven't I fought enough of these?_ "And just who are you?"

The Destroy's eyes flashed and it flung the Eclipse back, slamming it into the dirt with a victorious laugh from its pilot.

"I suppose the latest addition to my collection deserves to know my name!" he cackled. "Remember it well, little girl! Remember, when they ask you in hell who sent you there! _My name is Ash Gray!_"

The beam cannons fired; the Eclipse sprang back to its feet and lunged out of the way as they blasted into the ground. Emily backed away and lined up another Dragon's Fire blast, but the Destroy's positron reflector shrugged it off like nothing and the colossus burst forward with another hard downward saber hack to the Eclipse's shield.

"I don't see why they keep giving you people these things," Emily growled.

"Oh, you _will!_" cried Ash; the Destroy surged forward again and pounded the Eclipse with a wall of beam fire. The Eclipse darted away; the Destroy followed with surprising speed and furious swings from the two sabers on its wrists. "My Destroy has magnetic coating and wonderful, all-new joints! It can move like a normal-sized mobile suit! And as you'll see—" the titanic Gundam abruptly changed form again and sent a coursing blast from its Aufprall Dreizhen cannons streaking across the battlefield— "it's _quite _full of surprises!"

Emily ground her teeth as the Destroy changed again and came at her. "You're certainly full of talk."

"And I hear _you're _full of blood and guts!" Ash laughed. The Destroy pulled back its arm. "So let's open you up and take a look!"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Isolde, fire!"

Vibrations rattled through the _Minerva_ as it plowed forward through a wall of defensive CIWS fire. The Isolde's shells slammed head-on into the _Drake_-class destroyer up ahead and snapped off two of its arms; another volley from the Tristans blew the ship away.

On the bridge, Meyrin narrowed her eyes. "Malik, descend, thirty degrees!" The _Minerva_ obligingly swung its prow down and ducked below a salvo of return fire from one of Althea's defensive towers. A squadron of Resistance mobile suits moved in around the _Drake_'s wreckage; a Dagger L wielding a bazooka sprang out of hiding and blasted the Gottfried cannon apart with a pair of shells.

"Captain, heat signature ahead!" Burt exclaimed. "It's—"

He was cut off as the _Minerva_ lurched and Malik yanked the helm hard to starboard—just as a punishing wave of beam fire coursed through the battlefield and annihilated the Resistance mobile suits where they stood. Meyrin fixed her eyes up ahead at the fearsome shape of the _Charlemagne_.

"Should've expected to see _them,_" Roxy sighed.

Meyrin steeled herself. Lacus Clyne and her followers wouldn't have backed down before that thing. "All ahead, target the _Charlemagne_. Chen, charge the Tannhäuser. Roxy, inform Buckley that we're going to tie them up; get his men here to exploit the gap."

The _Minerva_ shook again from an exploding salvo of missiles, but Meyrin kept her eyes glued to the _Charlemagne_.

_And as for you, Captain Danilov, let's see what you're really made of..._

—

"So you're the asshole in charge of this little house of horrors, huh?" Viveka sneered; the Aurora Gundam spiraled elegantly through the Liberty's furious fusillade and rapidly transformed back to its mobile suit mode. "Painting the Moon with your hide is gonna be _fun!_" The two mobile suits met with a crash; the Liberty flung the Aurora aside with its shield and let fly another beam cannon barrage, but the Aurora wove its way through the shots and stormed in close with a beam rifle volley. The Liberty backed up behind its shield, and then the two mobile suits crashed together again with the Aurora bringing down a beam saber onto the Liberty's shield.

"And just who the hell are _you_, Resistance scum?" Hans von Schadt shot back. "You think these little toys can stand up to the power of human evolution?"

The Aurora shoved the Liberty back and showered it with beam fire. "Evolution, huh? That what you guys are calling it these days?"

With a crash, the Liberty blasted through the Aurora's fire and crashed head-on into the red Gundam. Viveka ground her teeth as she jammed the controls back and barely dodged another full burst from the Liberty. "As if a small-minded grunt like you would understand," Schadt snarled. "So ungrateful! I see that mechanical arm under your suit—and you have the gall to question what we're doing here?"

Viveka narrowed her eye. "You're lucky I like this thing, pretty-boy." The Aurora dove beneath another barrage, then launched itself up behind the Liberty. The white and black Gundam whipped around, beam rifle at the ready, only for it to be sawed in half by the Aurora's saber. The Liberty backed away from another swipe and drew a saber of its own, and the two Gundams clashed again in a shower of sparks. "But either way, you guys aren't doing too well already."

Schadt grinned back maniacally. "Oh, but that's where you're wrong, woman. We have a surprise of our own here, and if you push us too far, your victory will taste as bitter as defeat!"

"What the hell are you talking—"

"_Don't underestimate the Cyclops System!_"

Viveka's eye went wide as a spark of recognition shot up her spine. "You son of a bitch!"

"That's right," Schadt laughed, "in addition to your futile battle against the greatest triumphs of military human enhancement, now you're up against the clock too! I'll incinerate this whole base if I have to! And you have no idea where the array matrix is—so don't even _think_ of trying to test me!"

Silence reigned for a moment as the two mobile suits struggled against each other—and then Viveka cracked a smirk and threw a switch on the Aurora's console.

Schadt frowned. "What's so funny—"

"Hey Athrun," she said, "wanna go play hero?"

—

Shuddering under a relentless hurricane of beam fire, the faltering Zamzazar struggled to line up its cannons for a return blast—and with a screech of twisting metal, the Judgment Gundam plunged a beam saber through the positron reflector and ripped off the mobile armor's front left-hand claw. The Zamzazar quaked as though in pain—and the Judgment lanced forward and rammed its saber down into the cockpit. The eyes went dark; the Judgment backed away and riddled the mobile armor with DRAGOON blasts; and then the Zamzazar vanished in a ball of fire.

Rau glanced around the battlefield. Of course the Earth Alliance would use this base as bait for a Cyclops System. He had suspected as much even before Viveka had sent word to the _Minerva_'s Gundams. And of course Athrun would find and destroy it before they could detonate it. Funny thing about Cyclops Systems, they only worked when nobody knew they were there.

The Judgment reclaimed its DRAGOONs and took off low along the lunar surface. Up ahead was one of Althea's many defense nodes; a storm of fire from the mounted beam guns tore it apart, and with a final swipe from the beam saber, the tower vanished in a plume of flames. Rau continued on over a ridge and towards the base itself. Althea was built partly into a series of abandoned mining quarries, and the Cyclops System would be an easy target for any microwave radiation sensors. But it never hurt to be sure...

Up ahead, the Celestial Justice Gundam spiraled its way through the beam fire of a pair of Euclids and rocketed down towards one of the towers. It zigzagged its way through the tower's defensive fire and blasted a pulsing red beam through the base of the emplacement, blowing it apart, and then it slid effortlessly down into the darkened cavern below.

Rau chuckled as his DRAGOONs darted into the path before the Euclids could follow. "Far be it from me to help _him_ out," he chuckled, "but your fight is with _me_ now."

The Euclids arced around and rocketed towards the Judgment; Rau grinned and steeled himself for battle.

—

Sword met sword as the Crusader and Zulfiqar Gundams battled across the black sky, amid the insistent beam fire of the Vanguard and the darting Artemis. Shinn's eyes darted back and forth between his nimble foes as he pressed his sword against the Crusader's own blade.

The Artemis lunged up from behind; the Zulfiqar whipped around to slam it aside with the blunt end of its sword, then dart to the right to dodge a beam volley from the Vanguard. The Crusader followed up with a long-range cannon volley, but the Zulfiqar whirled gracefully around the blast and pounded the Gundam back with a hard overhead sword swing.

"Odds are a bit more even now, aren't they!" Shinn shouted; the Zulfiqar effortlessly danced through the Vanguard's barrage of beam fire, then slapped the Artemis aside with another heavy sword blow. The Crusader charged with a sword swing of its own; the Zulfiqar whipped around and jammed its blade into the way to stop the blow cold.

"There are still three of us and one of you," Sven growled; Shinn arched an eyebrow at the uneven feeling of his presence.

"Well," he answered, "we'll have to do something about that, won't we?"

Abruptly, the Zulfiqar rocketed up over the Crusader's head and then blasted down towards the Vanguard. The blue Gundam lurched back with a beam cannon volley, but it caught only afterimages and the Zulfiqar smashed its sword into the mobile suit's right shoulder, tearing off its entire arm. Shams screamed as his mobile suit skidded backward into the dirt.

"_Shams!_" screamed Mudie, and the Artemis rushed in from behind. "I'm going to _gut you_ for that!"

The Zulfiqar whirled around, ducked below the Artemis's horizontal beam saber blow, and ripped off the Artemis's right arm with a hard blow. The Artemis tumbled away; the Zulfiqar turned again and pointed its sword at the Crusader.

"There," Shinn said. "You and me now."

Sven's face darkened with rage; the Crusader hefted its sword and charged.

—

DRAGOONs flashed and beams flew through the sky as the Twilight Cortana effortlessly wove its way through the Nix Providence's own desperate DRAGOON fire. Lily jammed the controls back to avoid a blast from the Hail Buster—but an instant later, the black Gundam backed away under a beam rifle barrage from the Green Frame Kai's beam rifle.

"_Finally!_" Lily laughed, and the Cortana whirled down on its enemy. "It has been _way too long!_"

The Gale Strike and Regen Duel sprang up into her path; the Cortana's DRAGOONs rushed in to drive the two Gundams back. Lily pounded the Nix Providence's positron reflector with beam rifle as she closed in, beam saber in hand—

Suddenly, another mobile suit materialized in front of her and smacked her aside. Lily glowered up at the Nebula Blitz as she wheeled around and brought her DRAGOONs to bear.

"Oh, leave _him_ to me," Trojan interrupted—and abruptly, the Green Frame dropped down from above with a devastating overhead hack from the beam sabers on its rifle. "My poor old DOM Trooper needs some revenge, and it's coming out of _his_ ass."

"Since when were you so sentimental?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Miss Blood Knight."

The Cortana rocketed up towards the remaining mobile suits and drove them back with a flurry of DRAGOON fire. The Gale Strike ducked beneath the blasts and charged in close, only to be driven back by a beam rifle volley, and Lily gave chase with a giggle.

—

"Stella, are you sure this will work?" sputtered Riika Sheder as her Blaze ZAKU Phantom was driven back by a barrage of beam fire to its shields. "You'll be on your own—"

"Don't worry about Stella," she answered. "Just get back. Look like you're running away."

The Kali Gundam landed hard on the lunar dirt and glowered up at its foes—the Nero Blitz, four N Windams, four N Daggers, and the gargantuan _Witch's Hammer_, all waiting for her next move. Riika and her mobile suits backed away; the Kali lunged forward, and the beams rushed in, focused on the charging Gundam.

The Nero Blitz closed in with a salvo from its beam guns; Stella dove back down towards the ground and skirted along an outcropping, then somersaulted up over the blasts from two of the N Windams. One of the N Daggers closed in from above, sword upraised; Stella jetted to the side and whipped around suddenly, sawing the mobile suit in half at the waist as it passed.

She grunted in pain as the Kali shook, and up ahead the _Witch's Hammer_ pressed forward, railguns blazing.

"See, this is why I said this was a bad idea!" Riika cried.

"It's okay!" Stella yelled back. "Just wait!"

The Kali flung itself to the ground and skimmed low along the surface. One of the N Windams charged in close with its long beam saber ready; Stella abruptly rocketed backward to avoid its killing slice, then stabbed forward and punched clear through its cockpit.

With a crash, the Nero Blitz burst back into the battle and swiped at the Kali with its massive grappling claws. Stella threw herself back, then launched herself off the ground and over the horizontal slash from one of the N Daggers; another came rushing down from above, but she blasted away and landed with a crash on the hub at the center of the _Witch's Hammer_'s hull. The Gottfried cannons began to turn towards her—

"Riika, _now!_"

A wave of beam fire lanced out of the darkness and slammed head on into the _Witch's Hammer_, and two of the surviving N Windams and one of the N Daggers vanished in the blaze. The Kali whipped around, beam rifle ready, and squeezed off a single shot that drilled through the bridge; the black Gundam vaulted off the dying warship as it began to sink towards the lunar surface.

Spewing beams, the Nero Blitz charged forward, and Stella steeled herself for another fight.

—

The Gundam Eclipse shook as the Destroy Gundam pounded it with a ceaseless chain of punishing beam saber strikes. Emily squinted through the flashing lights and sparks for an opportunity, but this Destroy moved faster than she'd ever thought one of these things could.

"I don't have too many Gundam pilots in my collection!" Ash Gray cackled. "This is gonna be a good day!"

Emily scowled back and jetted over the Destroy's next saber swing—but the colossal mobile suit simply unleashed a storm of firepower that drove the Eclipse back. "Really now."

"I collect dolls for every person I kill," Ash went on, "but with my precious little Destroy, they've gotten to be so many I just don't have room anymore!"

The Eclipse shuddered as it skidded to a halt in the dust, and Emily shuddered at the thought of what she was hearing. "You collect _dolls?_"

"Indeed I do! I wonder what I'll use for you—"

"Wait a minute," Emily said, a plan forming in the back of her mind, "you're a grown man and you _collect dolls?_"

The Destroy surged forward and drove the Eclipse further back with a torrent of firepower. "Are you _judging_ me?" Ash snapped. "Awfully bold of someone who's about to die!"

Emily threw the Eclipse over the wave of blasts and ignited the Dragon's Tail whip. "You know, _I_ stopped collecting dolls when I was _ten_. And I'm a _girl_. What's your excuse?"

Ash's face began to twitch with anger. "You just don't know who you're talking to—"

"You're a grown man who collects dolls. You don't scare me."

The Destroy charged, beam sabers blazing. "Then we'll just have to _fix_ that, won't we?"

—

The dark, disused mine shafts underneath the Althea Crater base were the ideal place to hide all sorts of things, like escape craft, reinforcements, and a gigantic microwave radiation emitter designed to completely fry an installation and everyone near it.

Athrun Zala scanned the darkness ahead. Too bad for the Alliance, he knew how they worked. Still up to their old tricks after all this time.

He wove his way through the tunnels and took a hard left at the next junction. The Cyclops System's enormous power requirements made pinpointing the array's location easy in all these tunnels, as long as he didn't reach—

The Celestial Justice came to an abrupt stop and Athrun frowned. _A dead end. Lovely._

He set to work with the Gundam's beam cannons to blast an opening into the next tunnel, then rocketed ahead before the one behind him collapsed. The Cyclops System brought back the bitter memory of having sat up on the PLANTs while Operation _Spit Break_ went on, leaving Yzak on his own among the doomed ZAFT forces. And that was where Kira had brought the Freedom Gundam to the _Archangel..._

Athrun ground his teeth. All the more reason to blow up the damned thing.

—

Skimming along the lunar surface, the Fujin and Marduk Gundams hefted their weapons as one of the enemy _Drake_-class destroyers crested a ridge at the lip of the crater. Auel grinned and gunned the booster; Sting launched the gunbarrels and sent them to swarm around the ship's hull and pummel it with beam blasts. The ship faltered and began to fall back under the sudden onslaught—just in time for the Marduk to lunge up in front of it and spear it on a wave of pulsing red beam fire.

The two Gundams landed with a crash as the ship exploded. Sting glanced over his shoulder.

"The dock's up ahead, we can get in through there,' he said.

Aoma's Blast Impulse and over a dozen other mobile suits set down behind a ridge, overlooking the yawning mouth of the space dock. A _Nelson_-class ship and two more _Drake_s were still in dock, along with a squadron of waiting Windams.

"That doesn't look too bad," Aoma said. "You two take point, we'll—"

"Watch out!" Sting shouted, and the Fujin rammed the Impulse aside—just as a wave of beam fire came searing down from the black sky and the world shook under the engines of a Euclid mobile armor shooting by overhead.

"We'll deal with that!" Auel shouted. "Get to the dock and open it up!"

The Fujin and Marduk vaulted into the sky and charged after the Euclid. Aoma waved to her soldiers, and they rocketed towards the dock.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Missiles detonating around the _Charlemagne_ rattled the ship, and the vibrations wormed their way into Ivan Danilov's brain. He shook his head; there was no reason that _this_ battle of all should be testing him so.

Up ahead, the _Minerva_ swung down beneath the _Charlemagne_'s wall of beam fire and fired back with its Tristan cannons. The blasts landed hard against the black ship's laminated armor and rocked the vessel again. Danilov eyed the _Minerva_ carefully as it swung around—

"Captain, priority message from General Schadt," the comm officer spoke up. "He's saying..." She trailed off in disbelief.

"What? What is it?"

"He's...ordering us to move the enemies into Althea's range, so he can...activate a Cyclops System."

It took only a moment for Ivan Danilov's mind to take him back to that day when he'd heard about the battle at Alaska—and the Atlantic Federation's use of that hideous Cyclops System to fry not only the base, not only the attacking ZAFT forces, but the defending forces of the Eurasian Federation as well. He'd had friends there, reduced to a gory paste along walls and on the ground. One of his superiors had lost a son there. One of his subordinates had lost a father.

Danilov looked down towards the base. There were so many children there; his mind went back to the cage where they butchered each other at the Phantom Pain's instruction. Schadt would fry them all, all those children, rob them of any chance at salvation—and take not only the Resistance, but the Alliance forces here with them.

_No. No more_.

"Connie, broadcast to all ships on the battlefield," he said, and got to his feet with the intercom in hand.

"Wh-What are you going to do?" Vera started.

Danilov glared at the Althea Crater base. "What I should have done years ago." He glanced around the bridge. "If any of you object, feel free to try to stop me."

All eyes on the bridge remained on him, and nobody moved.

He clicked on the intercom and stepped forward. "Attention all units, this is Captain Danilov of the _Charlemagne_. The Phantom Pain has placed a Cyclops System underneath the Althea Crater base."

Outside, the battle seemed to stop for a moment, as all eyes turned towards the _Charlemagne_. The _Minerva_ swung around again, but didn't fire.

"Six years ago, the Earth Alliance used one of these devices at Alaska, where they killed thousands of Alliance soldiers in addition to the attacking ZAFT troops. They baited a trap with their own headquarters. Now they are doing the same here—and the bait is the installation where they create their Extended. Now ask yourselves, Alliance soldiers, if you really want to die to protect this evil place. Evacuate, or find and destroy the Cyclops System. The choice is yours. I have made mine."

He sat back down, just in time for General Schadt's outraged face to appear on the auxiliary screen. "Danilov, what the _hell_ are you doing?"

"Shut him off." The screen went dark and Danilov leaned forward. "We have a new target. Turn the ship against the Phantom Pain forces. And contact the _Minerva_."

Danilov swallowed hard as the crew set to work.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Nana Buluku**_**, outside Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

The engines of the _Nana Buluku_ hummed as the ship slid through the battle under the invisible cloak of Mirage Colloid. The bridge was silent as Ivan Danilov's words echoed through every mind.

In the chair next to the captain's seat, Gerhardt von Oldendorf sniffed in disgust. "I suppose this shouldn't be too surprising," he muttered. "Danilov never did have the stomach for the Phantom Pain."

At his side, the ship's captain ground his teeth in fury. "Director, at least permit us to attack the _Charlemagne_. It's treason, what he did. We can't let it go."

Gerhardt waved a hand. "They'd tear us apart in seconds, Montgomery. The important thing is that we escape here. As long as nobody catches us on the way out."

Montgomery sat back, obviously unsatisfied but unwilling to argue. Gerhardt glanced out the bridge windows, where up above the vast black hull of the _Charlemagne_ was turning its guns on Althea Crater's remaining defense nodes and blasting them apart, one by one—and the _Minerva_ sat in the background, watching as though in shock.

"Besides which," Gerhardt added halfheartedly, "if the Earth Alliance is falling apart, who are we to stick around for it?"

—

"You know, now that I think of it, I think I owe you one for trashing the original Green Frame too!" shouted Trojan Noiret as the custom rifle's sabers clashed against the Nebula Blitz's shield.

Inside the Nebula Blitz, Travis Alterman sneered. "Well aren't _you_ a cocky little shit." The red mobile suit surged forward and fired a trio of lancer darts straight at the Green Frame Kai's chest; the Green Frame swatted them aside with its beam shield and ducked back from the Nebula Blitz's furious saber swing. "Even if the rest of the battle is going tits up, I'm still gonna rip you apart!"

"I bet," Trojan shot back, and the two mobile suits clashed again. The Nebula Blitz flung the Green Frame back and fired forward its anchor, clamping the claws around the Green Frame's left arm; Travis laughed triumphantly as he dragged the Green Frame close, beam saber blazing for the kill—

In a flash, the Green Frame closed the distance and rammed the Nebula Blitz head-on with its left shoulder, sending the red mobile suit staggering back—just long enough for Trojan to sweep the sabers up through the Nebula Blitz's left shoulder and tear off its entire arm. Travis snarled in fury and surged forward—and with a crash, the _Maga-no-Ikutachi_ claws slammed down onto the Green Frame's shoulders.

"_Ha!_ Just try and do somethin' about it now, you little shit!" Travis roared.

Trojan smirked back. The Green Frame balled its left fist, the beam shield cover slid down over its knuckle, a beam spike flashed out of the emitter—and with a sickening crunch, Trojan slammed the fist through the Nebula Blitz's cockpit. The dying machine threw sparks; Trojan reared back and kicked it away, and watched it explode with a satisfied smirk.

—

The first Euclid backed away with smoking holes peppering its fuselage. The Judgment Gundam spiraled through its desperate beam fire and charged down towards it. The second Euclid rushed in to cover the first as it withdrew—but the DRAGOONs flashed in between them, and with a final shudder, the first Euclid slammed into the dirt and exploded.

Rau whipped around and showered the second Euclid with beam fire. It backed away behind its positron reflector and angled its beam cannons to return fire—but then another wave of blasts slammed into it. Rau glanced over his shoulder.

"Ah, self-preservation," he chuckled.

The Judgment pulled back and recalled its DRAGOONs as a squadron of white and blue Space Force Windams descended like hawks onto the Euclid and pounded it with beam fire. He lined up the two beam spike DRAGOONs and sent them shooting through the distracted mobile armor, and backed away in satisfaction as it exploded.

"Now then," he said, and scanned the battlefield. He could only imagine the fit Lord Djibril was throwing right now.

—

The Zulfiqar Gundam rang under the Crusader's relentless sword blows, but Shinn ignored the noise as he expertly parried every blow. The Crusader charged forward with a hard overhead hack; Shinn smacked the sword aside, then pounded the Crusader with a heavy kick to the chest.

"If your great big battleship's captain there can see the light, why can't you?" he asked.

The Crusader answered with a blinding blaze of long-range cannon fire that sent the Zulfiqar back on the defensive. It gave chase with another flurry of sword blows.

"I know somewhere in there, you know this is all wrong!" Shinn yelled. "So come out! Quit hiding from me!"

With a crash, the Crusader slammed its sword against the Zulfiqar's blade.

"I said _quit hiding!_"

Engines blazing, the Zulfiqar charged forward and threw the Crusader back. Shinn went on the offensive with a shout and drove the Crusader back with a storm of quick sword blows.

Sven ground his teeth as the Crusader fell back under the onslaught. His allies in chaos, his wingmen left behind, his mothership switching sides, and now this man in front of him, ripping down the walls that protected him...it was simply all lost.

The Zulfiqar charged again—but this time the Crusader flung itself towards the lunar dirt and fired a combat flare over its head, into the Zulfiqar's face. And with that, Sven took off over the surface, angling back towards Shams and Mudie's location.

Shinn grunted in pain as the Zulfiqar touched down. "Fine then," he said, "run away again."

—

A wave of DRAGOON fire flashed around the Nix Providence and pummeled its positron reflector. Kelly Maynard fought down the panic rising in her chest; as long as she could force open a path—

The Twilight Cortana lunged out of nowhere and plunged its beam saber into the Nix Providence's right shoulder, and with a thundering explosion the entire positron reflector assembly disappeared. Kelly grunted as her mobile suit crashed backward into the lunar surface, and the Cortana up above leveled off its cannons for a finishing blast.

Instead, the Hail Buster opened fire with its own cannon and drove the Cortana back, despite missing its left leg at the knee and left arm at the elbow. The red mobile suit swarmed its DRAGOONs around the Hail Buster; Merau yelped with surprise as she fell back, and the similarly damaged Gale Strike and Regen Duel rose to take her place. But the DRAGOONs arced after them instead.

"Just open a path!" Kelly shouted. "Get around her!"

"I'm trying!" Grey sputtered. "These things—"

Another wall of beam fire lanced through the battlefield and sent the Gale Strike and Regen Duel sprawling. Kelly whipped around, beam saber ignited, and charged upwards—at the oncoming sight of an entire squadron of Resistance mobile suits.

"Then I'll do it!" she shouted—

The Cortana was there, beam saber in hand, and everything went dark as it swept the saber through the Nix Providence's waist.

Down below, Grey's jaw dropped in horror as the Nix Providence vanished in a thunderous explosion. The Cortana landed with a crash and the other Resistance mobile suits followed suit, all of them with weapons leveled. He searched through the crowd for an opening, but with three damaged mobile suits, surrounded and outclassed by that red Gundam...

He let out a breath. So that was it. "Do either of you feel like dying?" he asked.

No one responded—and so he checked the seals on his helmet, opened the cockpit, and slowly got out with his hands up.

—

The tunnels opened up into a yawning cavern, and the Celestial Justice came to a stop at the cave mouth as Athrun took in the sight before him.

Dozens of dish-shaped microwave emitters stretched before him. On the far side of the tunnel, he could see a control platform; one beam rifle blast across the expanse wiped it out. But that still left these dozens of emitters that altogether could still annihilate every living thing in the area.

Athrun snapped his beam rifle up towards the ceiling and opened fire. The Celestial Justice poured beam fire into the cavern ceiling, and the world began to rumble. Rocks began to fall and emitters shattered like glass; he turned the beams towards the floor, tearing up the Cyclops System's devices. And with a final shudder, the walls gave way and rock began to slide through the cavern.

He backed away, back into the tunnels, and thought back to his friends from ZAFT. If nobody could ever excavate this thing from the wreckage again, then so much the better.

—

"Damn it all!" screamed Hans von Schadt as his Liberty Gundam desperately wove its way through a storm of fire from the pursuing Aurora Gundam. Danilov's treachery had completely undone the battle; the Resistance was running rampant through the base, the regular forces had turned against him, the Phantom Pain troops were falling back in all sectors...

And that _Gundam_ was still there.

He whipped around with a blazing full burst of firepower; the Aurora darted aside and transformed, and with a heavy crash it slammed its foot into the Liberty's chest and threw it back.

"Looks like you're having a bad day, pretty-boy!" laughed Viveka. The Liberty charged with a furious scream from its pilot; Viveka ducked beneath the saber blows and drew her own blade to parry the rest. "Well, don't you worry, it'll be over real soon!"

"You haven't killed me yet, Resistance bitch!" Schadt snarled.

"Oh, you're right, I haven't," Viveka shot back; the Aurora danced through the Liberty's frenzied fire. "Well, let me just fix that right up..."

Schadt threw the Liberty forward with a shriek; the Aurora backed away behind its beam shield—

And then, faster than Schadt could see, the Aurora somersaulted over the charging Liberty, whipped around, and shot it clear through the chest with a single beam rifle blast.

Schadt stared in shock at the screen and the Liberty's dying controls—and then he vanished as the Liberty Gundam exploded.

Viveka let out her breath and took the opportunity to glance around the battlefield. "I wonder if Athrun found that Cyclops System yet," she muttered. "Well, we're not all dead, so I guess so." The Aurora transformed and rocketed off towards the base.

—

Another N Dagger fell before the unstoppable beam barrage from Riika's troops, and the blue ZAKU Phantom ducked around the shots and planted itself on the lunar surface. The lone surviving N Windam charged towards her, beam saber blazing—

Before it ever reached her, a flurry of beam blasts ripped it apart, and Courtney's Proto Chaos dropped back into the fight.

"Hey! You're back!" Riika said with a grin.

"The base is ours. Now we're mopping up." He glanced off to the side. "What about them?"

Near the _Witch's Hammer_'s wreckage, the Nero Blitz bombarded the Kali Gundam with beam blasts. The sleeker mobile suit fell to one knee as the blasts pummeled its beam shield, and the Nero Blitz closed in with its grappling arms springing to life.

And then, quicker than quick, the Kali lunged forward and slammed its fists into the grappling claws' open hands. The Nero Blitz stopped short, just as the Kali activated its beam shields and blew the two claws apart—and then slammed the Nero Blitz back with a ringing kick to the chest. The Nero Blitz staggered back and unleashed a storm of lancer darts, but the Kali wove its way through them, a beam saber in hand.

At last, the Nero Blitz charged forward with a beam saber of its own in hand. It swung upwards towards the Kali's chest—but it caught nothing as the nimble black Gundam ducked down beneath the slash, then stabbed upward with its own saber and plunged it through the Nero Blitz's cockpit.

Watching from afar as the Kali backed away from its dying quarry, Riika grinned. "She's okay."

—

Emily grunted and the Eclipse seemed to agree as Ash Gray's Destroy buffeted her with beam blasts. It swatted the Eclipse to the side with one hard saber swipe, then to the other side with another swing.

"Not so cocky now, are you?" Ash shrieked.

"Your side is losing, you know," Emily answered.

"What do I care!" The Destroy surged forward with a wave of firepower that drove the Eclipse back. "As long as I get to kill, that doesn't matter at all!" The Destroy brought down both its sabers onto the Eclipse's shield and smashed it into the dirt. "_And today's the day!_"

Emily's eyes went wide in surprise as the Destroy brought its right foot down hard onto the Eclipse's chest and began to press. Ash's cackling filled the cockpit.

"I can stand here all day, y'know!" he laughed. "Savoring every single scream as I _squeeze the life out of you!_"

The Eclipse rattled and groaned as the Destroy put more force onto its foot. Emily glanced around for an opening and saw her mobile suit's left arm still free.

"So are you afraid of me _now?_" Ash screamed.

Emily scowled back. "No."

And then the Eclipse swung up the Dragon's Tail, glowing red with heat, and wrapped it around the Destroy's knee joint. With a hard tug, the entire leg gave way. Ash gasped in shock—just as the Eclipse leapt back up and tore off the Destroy's right arm with its heat rod. The maimed giant staggered back with a torrent of firepower to cover itself, but the Eclipse darted through the blasts and ripped off its left arm at the shoulder with its beam sword, then rushed in even closer and delivered a point-blank palm cannon blast to the Destroy's head.

"H-How dare you!" Ash shrieked. "You little—"

The Destroy rocked as the Eclipse slashed out the three cannons on its chest. Ash let out a wordless scream of fury and surged forward with a wall of fire from the circumference cannons.

Instead of making contact, the Eclipse dove through the blasts amid a cloud of afterimages, and plunged its beam sword into the Destroy's cockpit. Emily grimaced as she felt the twisted presence within evaporate; she ripped open the mobile suit's chest, switched back to the Dragon's Fire, and fired a single blast into the mobile suit's open wound.

And with that, the defeated Destroy staggered back and exploded.

The Eclipse landed with a shudder and Emily let out her breath. She shook her head to clear away the last tinges of his crazed presence from her memory and sat back up. Judging by the reports she'd heard during her fight with that lunatic, the battle had gone well for the Resistance, so perhaps there wouldn't be much left for her to do—

"This is a message from the President of the Atlantic Federation."

Emily snapped her eyes towards the auxiliary screen in disbelief, where a man in a suit sat in an elaborate office, hands folded on a desk, staring intently into the camera.

"Citizens of the Earth Sphere," he said, "I am the Atlantic Federation's new President, Robert Meyers. As you are undoubtedly aware, I took office under the most tragic and unusual of circumstances. I did not seek the Presidency, but I find myself here now, and as your new President, it is my duty to report on a matter of grave importance, to my people and to those around the world."

Emily's brow furrowed at the words. What was this about...?

"Since taking office, a great many things have come to my attention. Secrets and lies kept by my predecessors. One of them concerns the events you may have heard about up on the Moon, at the Althea Crater lunar base. I speak of the oft-rumored Extended program, believed to have been terminated in CE 73. But upon taking this office, I have discovered that it still continues, under the auspices of the Phantom Pain and the Earth Alliance.

"Therefore, in keeping with our country's highest and most honored principles, I have just signed an executive order that calls for the Atlantic Federation's withdrawal from the Earth Alliance."

Emily winced at the palpable feeling of shock rippling throughout Althea Crater.

"Furthermore," Robert Meyers continued, "due to the manifold violations of international law and Atlantic Federation law that my administration has uncovered by my predecessor, the Phantom Pain, and the Earth Alliance at large, I have given further orders that henceforth, the Phantom Pain shall be considered an illegal terrorist group, and President Djibril shall be a wanted criminal." More shock flooded out across the area. Emily felt her jaw drop as the war changed before her eyes. "The full power of the Atlantic Federation armed forces and law enforcement will be employed to bring these criminals to justice."

Meyers continued, but Emily sat back in disbelief. The Atlantic Federation, withdrawing from the Alliance? Now? But what about ZAFT? Were they allies now?

She looked back towards Althea Crater.

"This decade has been trying on our people," Meyers said, "but the arc of history bends towards justice—and _we_ will bend it."

—

To be continued...


	41. Phase 41: Abominations

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 41 - Abominations

—

**June 26th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

The crowd surged over the barricades and stormed down the street, towards a waiting line of riot police. They backed away before the onslaught, but it made little difference; a human wave crashed over them and the carefully constructed police line vanished in a seething mass of swung batons and fists.

The screen changed. Cities in flames, pulsing with riots, an old man being forced from his office as a political avalanche swept over him...

Valentine and Kira watched in Messiah's control room as the world changed below them. For Robert Meyers, things were going spectacularly. Ever since the end of combat at Althea Crater, the day had been filled with ever-more-horrifying images from the base. Children in cage matches, gruesome human experimentation, families torn apart by the whims of a faraway bureaucracy and the zealots that controlled its machinery. The anger had spilled out faster than anyone had thought possible. Premier Musashihara had quickly sided with the Atlantic Federation and withdrawn the Republic of East Asia from the Earth Alliance. President Schtorzmann of the Eurasian Federation was now an ex-president, forced from office as the people rose up against his complicity with such evil. Prime Minister Manuel of the South African Union looked likely to follow. Whole regions were in open revolt. The Earth Alliance was disintegrating—and ZAFT hadn't had to do a thing.

Valentine felt a twinge of annoyance at the thought that her great foe was collapsing and it wasn't her doing, but events were giving her an opportunity either way. Torn apart and pitted against each other, the nations of the Earth Alliance would be helpless to assemble the kind of military might it would take to stop her resuscitated fleet and the ZAKU Goliath.

"We'll have to move quickly to exploit this conflict," she said. Kira glanced over at her. "How long would it take to marshal the fleet and complete the final outfitting?"

"About two weeks."

"Then let's get the ball rolling." She grinned down through the main window at the Earth, seething with discord. "Fortune is kind to us, Kira. It won't be long now."

—

**Daedalus Crater lunar base, the Moon**

A disaster. That was the only way to describe this. An utter, unmitigated disaster.

Lord Djibril clenched and unclenched his fist around his cane as he followed a knot of Phantom Pain soldiers and officers to the dock. Everything was falling apart around him. Althea Crater was lost. General Schadt, the Destroys, the Extended, the _Charlemagne_, even Misa, all gone. The Atlantic Federation and the Republic of East Asia had declared him an enemy of their respective states. The Eurasian Federation was already seething with unrest. The South African Union was on the edge of abyss. Only the Phantom Pain and those Alliance regulars who remained loyal to himself and Blue Cosmos could still be counted on—and they still had to escape the reach of those who couldn't.

And now, here he was fleeing Daedalus Crater—_Daedalus Crater_, the lunar stronghold of his loyal army—as the Atlantic Federation smashed its way into the fortress. The Requiem was disabled; the relay points were destroyed; everything had happened so fast...

"This way, sir," one of the officers said—

"Get down!" another screamed, and shouldered Djibril to the floor. The hallway filled with smoke—and up ahead, Djibril could see soldiers in flight suits with flak jackets and assault rifles pouring into the corridor after him. A squad of Phantom Pain infantry leapt into action and the chatter of automatic weapons filled the air.

"President Djibril, quickly!" one of the officers cried, and another group of infantry rushed in around Djibril to guide him towards a nearby hatch. Djibril glanced over his shoulder hatefully as the Atlantic Federation soldiers died amid a grenade blast.

_As long as I live, I can salvage this..._

The soldiers guided him down another corridor and he quickly made his way through an airlock hatch. Djibril let out his breath as his feet touched down on the deck, the hatch swung shut behind him, and the rattling started up as vast engines came to life.

Lord Djibril arrived on the bridge of the _Girty Lue_-class battleship _Ahura Mazda_ with a furious look on his face and swept into the seat by the captain's chair. Nearby, Admiral Bartholomew Stone, looking worse for wear after what Djibril could only guess was an ordeal getting off Earth, turned towards him.

"Good to see you're alright, sir," Stone said. "We'll activate the Mirage Colloid as soon as we're clear."

"Very well," Djibril said darkly, and glanced towards the other side of the bridge. And then there was _her_.

"We'll triumph in the end," Crayt Markav said with a manic grin. "Nobody can stop us. We have the righteousness of the Lord on our side."

"Of course we do," Djibril sneered, and fixed his eyes out the bridge windows. Righteousness of the Lord or not, he was rapidly running out of people that _were_ on his side.

—

"How the fuck did this happen?" screamed Shams Coza as the Vanguard Gundam backpedaled out of its hangar, under a wave of beam fire. Up ahead, a squad of Windams in the white and blue standard colors of the Earth Alliance Space Force gave chase. One of them charged forward; Shams backed away with a beam cannon barrage, but the Artemis Gundam slid in with a raised beam saber to chop it in two.

"So many traitors," Mudie grunted, "we can't beat them like this..."

"Jesus, no fucking warning at all," added Shams. "Mudie, we have to get out of here. The _Ahura Mazda_ is leaving."

The two Gundams turned upward, where the afterimages and explosions betrayed the Crusader Gundam at work, chopping its way through a squadron of Windams. Sven angled towards a _Drake_-class destroyer and plowed clear through its furious Vulcan fire, to plunge the anti-ship sword into the ship's hull and rip it open. The Crusader backed away and pumped a long-range cannon blast into the opening, and then watched as the ship exploded.

"Sven, come on! We're gonna get left behind!" Shams yelled.

In the Crusader, Sven cast one last baneful look at Daedalus Crater, in flames as the Atlantic Federation brought down the hammer, before he turned the Gundam towards the fleeing _Ahura Mazda_ to make his escape.

—

**Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Meyrin Hawke couldn't help but think back to her birthday as the last time she'd been surrounded by so much cheer. But this time they had something even better than her birthday to celebrate.

An exultant crowd of cheering pilots and fighters had gathered in one of the hangars, waving the trophies they'd seized from the base. A handful of men in black Phantom Pain uniforms and handcuffs were shuffled past, under heavily armed guard. Some people were fawning over the mobile suits left in the hangar, and whatever other supplies left in the base had been raided long ago—even as the infantry teams continued to sweep the base for holdouts and stragglers.

But as much as she would've liked to join the drunken revelry, Meyrin had a more important job before her. Besides which, once the infantry got down into the Extended labs, they would probably want to get drunk for an entirely different reason.

She landed with Abbey on one of the decks near Althea's vast dock—with four well-armed men from the _Minerva_'s marine complement at her side. Up ahead stood a man and a woman in the familiar black uniform, surrounded by armed Resistance fighters. It was just as well, Meyrin supposed. No chance was worth taking in a situation like this. She came closer and ran a hand over the handgun inside her coat. So there was her nemesis of the past four months. Ivan Danilov.

Naturally, he was taller than her.

Nonetheless, Meyrin was the one with over a dozen armed men on her side, so she pushed down the emotions and stepped forward.

"So we finally meet face to face," Danilov said, not flinching in the slightest. Meyrin came to a stop in front of him and did her best to stay unreadable. "Before we get into any discussions about what you're going to do with me or my ship, I do have requests."

Meyrin glanced at Abbey. "Alright."

"I want my men allowed to leave unharmed if they so choose. And I want the rest adequately cared for."

"We can do that."

"Then," he broke into a slow smile and put his hand forward, "it's good to be on your side for once."

The tension melted away as Meyrin shook his hand with a smile of her own. "I was wondering what a man like you was doing in the Phantom Pain."

"We'll have plenty of time to ask ourselves that later," Danilov answered. "In the meantime, I believe I need to meet your superiors."

Meyrin shared another look with Abbey. "That can be arranged," she said. "And while we're doing that, welcome aboard, Captain Danilov."

—

"They've been quiet so far, but they haven't been willing to take the plunge yet and offer their services to us," the hulking mountain of a man explained as he stalked through Althea Crater's halls with an assault rifle hanging from his shoulder. A cadre of armed men surrounded him—and by his side were Emily and Trojan, both glancing nervously between each other. "To be honest, I'm not sure what your meeting them is gonna do, but who knows."

"I know this is an inconvenience," Emily said. "I appreciate it."

The doors slid open and they stepped through into the cellblock where the Resistance had decided to stash its Alliance prisoners. The parties were screeching to a halt as word came back of just what the infantry teams were finding in the lowest levels of the base, and the base detention center was already full to overflowing with Alliance personnel—as much for their own safety as anyone else's, as the gunmen worked their way through the base and found horrors at every turn.

Emily came to a stop in front of one cell, with only three people inside, all in the standard black and gray flight suit of the Phantom Pain. But one of them she knew by sight, and when he caught sight of her, his eyes went wide in disbelief.

"Y-You..."

"You remember me, huh?"

The boy sprang to his feet, anger flashing through his blue eyes. "What do you want? Here to gloat?"

"No, I just wanted to meet you." She paused as he seemed taken aback. "Since the last time we met was...different."

Trojan frowned. "You two have a history?"

"Sort of," she answered. "We...fought each other at Volgograd."

The boy balled his fists. A blonde-haired girl got to her feet and put a hand on his shoulder, "Grey, don't," she said. "It's not going to change anything. And besides..." She trailed off as she gestured to the third companion on the floor—the one that Emily noted was seething with all kinds of emotions.

Grey looked back at Emily for a moment and finally sighed. "So what did you want from me, huh?"

"I just wanted to meet you under...better circumstances."

"Well, consider me met." He slumped back down next to the black-haired girl.

Emily was silent for a moment and glanced awkwardly at Trojan. "So what are you going to do?"

"Rot in this cell, it looks like," he snapped.

"You don't have to." Grey blinked in surprise and looked up. "Your captain joined us. You could too." She took a step closer to the bars. "We...don't _have_ to be enemies." Trojan squirmed, but she ignored it. He could play jealous boyfriend later.

Grey turned away with a scowl. "We'll see."

—

Whatever cheerfulness Viveka von Oldendorf had felt at winning a major battle and personally wiping out the evil bastard in charge of this place was gone when she got to see just what that evil bastard had been in charge of down here.

The stench was the first thing that hit her. The stenches of blood and death were familiar ones to her nose, but here they were almost overpowering. It wasn't all from the fighting, as the gunmen had reported—and judging by the way so many of them had emerged from Althea's lower levels with ashen looks on their faces, she believed them. But curiosity drove her on as she wandered through the bloodstained hallways and passed by the occasional corpse of a Phantom Pain foot soldier. She found a door with a pair of horrified Resistance fighters huddled by it, steeled herself, and walked through—

"Oh my God."

It was an impromptu triage where Mikhail Coast was in a blood-spattered lab coat giving orders to a small army of medics, but the bodies on the cots were almost all children. Children with horrible injuries. And the room was scattered with the remains of what Viveka could only assume were the ones who didn't make it. Human remains everywhere, and as she looked at the walls, she felt her stomach turn at the sight of row upon row of human brains.

"What...what the hell is this place?"

She found Athrun kneeling near one of the cots, over a little girl swathed in bloody bandages. He glanced up at her.

"This is where the Alliance makes its Extended," he said. "You...probably shouldn't have come down here."

"What are _you_ doing here?"

He waved a hand. "I'm needed."

Viveka looked down at the girl in front of her. She couldn't have been older than nine years old, and already a long and intricate pattern of surgical scars were etched into her chest. And not all of them were surgical, either; some of them had the haphazard course of battle wounds.

Her stomach turned again. Battle wounds on a nine year old child.

"Who is she...?"

"One of the subjects," Athrun explained. "She got off with light injuries in the battle, but they sedated her all the same so they could work on the others." A scream of agony pierced the din and all eyes turned towards one corner of the room, where a doctor was extracting a bullet from a thrashing boy. "As...you can see."

Viveka fought to keep the tears from her eye. "What...what did they _do_ to these kids?"

Athrun got to his feet with a grim look. "Lots of things. Surgical implants, brainwashing, mental rewiring, conditioning...I wouldn't ask Sting and Auel about it, though. It's pretty traumatic."

"And...they do this to _children?_"

Athrun shrugged. "If you ever doubted the Phantom Pain was evil..."

—

"I don't _care!_" the boy shrieked, fists clenched, barely restrained by three burly Resistance gunmen. "I want my _mother back!_"

Auel Neider winced at the word and silently thanked Ian Lee that he was at least beyond _that_. "Look, kid, there's nothing we can do," he said, and awkwardly put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "We can't even look for her if you don't know her name."

"She's my mother! She can't be gone! She wouldn't leave me here!" the boy screamed, and struggled against his captors. The fighters glanced between each other.

"I don't think we're gonna get anywhere, Neider," one of them grunted.

"Yeah," Auel sighed, "go get him his shots."

"_Damn you, bring her back!_" cried the boy, as a fourth fighter swept in to help back him off. Auel sighed and decided not to tell him that she was probably dead. Otherwise they'd never get him settled down.

It dredged up an awful lot of miserable memories that Auel had to take special care to crush. The Extended program's trainees had always had two people groomed in their minds as their parents: an officer in the military, who would be their supervisor upon completion, and an instructor in the program. That was where they'd gotten _his_ block word from, after all. 2nd Lieutenant Rachel Parker, combat instructor for the Extended program, had been the one for him. And every second in this damned place brought back his warming memories of her.

It also reminded him that she had been killed in the purging at Lodonia. He shook his head.

He saw way too much of himself in all these shrieking, terrified, mutilated children. And this was only on the upper levels where the uninjured subjects had been brought. He dared not venture down into the lower levels, where the testing labs were, and where the injured children were being kept. He'd heard all kinds of rumors about weapons testing and Frankenstein abominations down there, and he'd have nightmares enough just seeing his brethren like this.

But this was why he was here. This was why Ian Lee had gone to such trouble and risk to break his conditioning. To free him. The Alliance had given him power and Lee had given him the freedom to use it as he chose.

He slumped against a wall and let out a sigh, and then blinked in surprise as he felt an arm around his shoulder. Roxy smiled encouragingly at him.

"Hangin' in there?"

Auel squeezed his eyes shut. "This is so incredibly fucked up I can't find words to describe it."

She frowned. "Memories?"

"So many goddamn memories."

"But you're doing it anyway," she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, "and that's what makes you a good person."

Auel smiled. "At least I got that."

—

Althea Crater's computers were simply _rich_ with information, and Rau Le Creuset did enjoy information. Unfortunately, this was in such vast quantities that analyzing it would have to wait until he was less busy.

Instead, the base's logs had divulged to him a particularly juicy secret. During the battle, a warship had departed carrying one Gerhardt von Oldendorf. From there, it was child's play to extrapolate headings based on the last reports of its IFF code location, and they led straight to...well, that was simply the hand of destiny at work.

He turned in the small computer room as the door slid open and Emily slipped inside. Of course she would find him when he called.

"I found something here that I thought you might want to know," he said, and gestured to the screen. Emily came to a stop and a tornado of emotions whipped up within her.

"My...father?"

"He was here during the battle, and he escaped," Rau explained. "The logs suggest that he was heading for Lagrange Point 4, and in particular..." He trailed off. "Are you familiar with a place called the Mendel colony?"

"N-No..."

"I thought so." He stepped forward and assumed a professorial pose. Destiny at work indeed. "It was a space colony where genetic research was conducted. You remember Kira Yamato, I'm sure? He was the result of one of its shadier projects, a program designed to create a Coordinator that perfectly manifested the traits it was intended to have by removing the variable of the mother's womb. Quite a few failures were made along the way, and over the course of the research they learned quite a bit about altering the human body in enhancing ways."

Emily frowned. "Why are you telling me about this?"

"Because, Emily, he's your father—and he's escaping out of your grip." He put a hand on her shoulder. "I know how you feel about him, but I think we can both agree that he does not have long to live. Someone will track him down and kill him. All this chaos is the perfect opportunity to pick off a meddlesome bureaucrat. So if you wanted to get answers from him, your window of opportunity is rapidly closing."

The emotions whipped up again. "Answers...?"

"After all that's transpired between you, you don't want to know the truth about what he had done to you? About your purpose to him? About your _mother?_"

The tornado surged and Rau suppressed a smile. "But we're staying here. We can't just get up and leave."

"Well, the _Minerva_ can't," Rau said with a shrug. "But nobody said anything about _you_."

"Me?"

"Of course. With the Eclipse's Voiture Lumiere system, you could easily make it on your own to L4."

Emily looked unconvinced. "But...I can't just get up and leave everyone here. What if they need me?"

"I will deal with that," Rau said. "As for you, I think you have a more pressing concern."

The emotions began to stabilize.

_Perfect._

"So then..." Emily trailed off. "What should I do?"

Rau smiled. "We'll wait a couple of days and keep our eyes on L4, to see if he materializes there. And if he does...you can do what you must."

—

**June 27th, CE 77 - ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"It's still running sluggishly," sighed Gary Talon as he slumped down in the crew lounge. "I think the OS needs a tweak or two."

On the other side of the table, Juarez Recardo shrugged. "You can have Mason take care of that pretty easily."

"Yeah, but it's still a pain the ass."

They both fell silent as Kara Guinness drifted through the room. They watched her round a corner and head for the galley, looking like hell. Gary arched an eyebrow.

"What's up with her?"

"Only what's up with the rest of us," Juarez sighed. "Nightmares. Guilt. Fear. That kinda thing."

"I thought Miss Kill 'em All was beyond that."

Juarez gave Gary a stern look. "Everyone has a breaking point."

"Yeah, but she's the one who's always ranting at us about how the Naturals all have to die or else the whole universe will explode or something."

Juarez shook his head. "Gary, there's a difference between saying stuff like that and meaning it."

—

Kira Yamato was a man with burdens. Everyone in ZAFT knew that. He could not be their champion without feeling the weight of a people's expectations on his shoulders. But what always struck Kayla Segar was the way he took on so much without complaint.

That was at least how his history had worked. Everyone knew he had fought for the Earth Alliance in the Valentine War, but everyone equally knew that his spell in the Alliance had been less than voluntary in nature. And it had not taken him too long to see the Alliance for what it was and escape its clutches. And while he had done it with stolen ZAFT equipment and stymied their progress in the war, no one could forget that it was Kira Yamato and the Freedom Gundam that had stepped in to save the PLANTs from nuclear annihilation at the end of the Valentine War.

But what burdens he'd taken on. From fighting against his own people for the sake of his friends while press-ganged by the Alliance to leading the Coordinators back from exile, he bore on his shoulders the weights and expectations of so many. Kayla had no idea how he did it.

And however he did it was starting to fail. She could see in his eyes the toll this war was taking on him. Lost sleep, lower appetite, the telltale dimming of a man with far too much to worry about. The war was going poorly, and this reprieve with the Alliance's disintegration was a godsend to ZAFT. Their fleet was being chipped away, they were losing valuable resources to the invincible _Minerva_, and the Earth Alliance had proven to be a more formidable foe than anyone had expected before its fracture.

But now there was a chance. Kayla knew it, ZAFT knew it...and by the struggling flicker in his eyes, Kira Yamato seemed to know it too.

—

**The White House, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

"The problem regarding ZAFT is that for all his other faults, Lord Djibril was right," Admiral MacIntyre explained in the comfortable confines of the Oval Office. President Meyers sat behind his desk and Premier Musashihara of the Republic of East Asia sat in the other chair. MacIntyre truly hated dealing with these politicians, but at least Musashihara was a pragmatist at heart. "ZAFT's space fortress has a powerful beam shield that can easily shrug off the Requiem's blasts. It would have to be pierced with mobile suit armaments. They have the debris in the L5 shoal zone and a sizable fleet to prevent that from happening, so his decision to wear down the ZAFT fleet over time was essentially a right one." He frowned behind his beard. "But now we've upset that balance, so we have to act quickly to end this internecine conflict, before ZAFT can capitalize on it."

Musashihara sat back. "If I know Djibril, he's making the same calculations, so he'll be looking to resolve this conflict just as quickly and turn his attention back to ZAFT."

"Of course," Meyers said airily, "so he'll seek out a single decisive battle, throw the worst the Phantom Pain has at us, and hope it works out for the best."

"Something like that," agreed MacIntyre.

"Then this problem looks simple to me," Meyers said with a shrug. "We let Djibril set up his decisive showdown and crush him."

MacIntyre shifted uncomfortably. "He has the Phantom Pain fleet—"

"Forty ships at the most," Meyers sneered.

"And he has loyalists throughout the Alliance military," MacIntyre added testily. "And we have no idea how many _those_ might be, especially if he can retain the Eurasian or South African fleets."

"The Eurasian fleet has by and large remained loyal to the Eurasian Federation, and they are still up in the air," Meyers replied. "As for South Africa, between the Atlantic Federation's fleet and East Asia's forces, we can easily destroy them if need be. South Africa's space fleet has always been inferior."

"But that will take months of campaigning," MacIntyre protested, "and we can't afford to give ZAFT months off—"

"Gentlemen," Musashihara interrupted, "our first target ought to be Djibril, as the admiral has said. If other nations intervene on his behalf, we will deal with them accordingly. As for ZAFT, it appears the Alliance's campaign against them has worked to knock them back on their heels, but they will not be on the defensive for long. As long as they are," he fixed Meyers with a steely look, "we should take this opportunity."

—

**June 28th, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

Meyrin Hawke cringed at the sight of what still looked to her like a little girl in the chair opposite the desk in the captain's office on the _Minerva_. Sure, she had become an ace mobile suit pilot that struck fear in the hearts of soldiers in the Earth Alliance and ZAFT alike, but that didn't make Emily von Oldendorf look like any less of a teenager.

"So," she said with a sigh, "we've been searching through the files in Althea's computers and, well, I thought you'd want to know before anyone else." She pushed a sheaf of papers forward. "There's quite a bit in there about you."

Emily swallowed hard as she read. "I...figured there would be."

Meyrin sighed as she sat back and glanced at her own copy on the computer screen. It wasn't quite as gruesome as what she'd seen of the Extended labs and the abominations they'd been creating down there, but for the sheer magnitude of ruthlessness it would take for a man to submit his own daughter, it was at least a strong contender. Emily had been pushed to the very limits of human endurance in a child's body and had the very limits of medical technology to rescue her from the brink of death or permanent disability. The ship's doctor had been confounded at how she could possibly have survived this training, let alone in a healthy body; Dr. Coast had been even more amazed to learn that she was, technically, a Natural.

But she hadn't completely escaped damage. Her body was perfectly healthy, but her mind...

"It...makes sense," Emily said quietly. "The gaps in my memories...I guess they brought me up here a few times for...training."

"There's a file in there about your mother," Meyrin said, and Emily shuffled through the pages in search of it. She grimaced as she watched the younger girl start to read. They already knew the story of Lorelei von Oldendorf, and that just made Emily's reactions to ZAFT's Unit Zero-Two all the more tragic.

"I know," she said quietly.

Meyrin shifted uncomfortably. "You can do what you want with this information now. It's your past, after all."

Emily stared down at the page and said nothing.

—

"I should have known MacIntyre had set this up," sighed Ivan Danilov, slumped in a conference room chair. "But what I didn't know was that _you_, sir, were in on this too."

At the other side of the table sat Joseph Copland with a sheepish smile on his face. "We all have our secrets, captain."

"Some more than others, it seems."

"In any event, we have business," Copland said, and folded his hands on the table. "We are willing to offer you a place in our fleet. You'll be watched, of course, and we will replace any of your personnel who do not share your new political persuasion with people of our choosing. James would probably be howling if he were here, but we have losses to replace and if we're going to go intruding on the Alliance's civil war, we're going to need all the help we can get. We will be stricter on you than on anyone else in observance of our rules and pursuit of our objectives. I'm sure you'll understand."

"Of course," Danilov said as he shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"As for your pilots..."

"I understand they haven't all come around."

"No, they haven't."

Danilov sighed. That would be awkward too. "They'll have to do that on their own. But in any case, I do have a request."

"Oh?"

"In some engagement, if it's at all possible, I want to go into battle _with_ the _Minerva_."

Copland arched an eyebrow. "Wasn't it your assignment to destroy them in the first place?"

"Yes," Danilov said, "and I'd like to...clear the air, as it were."

Copland smirked back. "We'll see."

—

It had taken Erin quite a while to stop crying, and Grey couldn't entirely blame her. There was a lot to cry over. He hadn't felt that much at Kelly's demise, but it didn't exactly lift his heart. Merau had handled it better by simply resigning herself to fate, and at the news of the Atlantic Federation and East Asia's withdrawal from the Earth Alliance, most of the captives had simply lost the will to resist what the Resistance had in store for them. Why should they care, after all, if the Alliance for which they had fought was crumbling away anyways?

But there was still that offer on the table, and it had gnawed on Grey ever since he'd finally met his haunting foe. He had expected sanctimony and gloating from the Angel of Death, but what he'd gotten was an offer to finally do something about that wriggling feeling of doubt that had tormented him ever since Volgograd. The evil in this place made it clear. It was an offer he couldn't pass up.

But nor could he pass up _them_. Merau didn't appear to care one way or another anymore, but Erin...

He sat down next to her and nudged her with his elbow. "Hey."

She stared up at him through teary eyes for a moment. Grey frowned. So maybe the crying wasn't _totally_ over. "What...?"

"Just wondering how you're doing."

"Not any better," she sighed.

Grey swallowed hard. Now or never. "You know that offer the Angel made to us?"

Erin blanched. "You...you're not seriously thinking of taking her up on it, are you?"

"Well, why not?" He waved a hand at their surroundings. "You saw what they do in this place. How can I sit here and say that the Resistance is worse than that? That's not something I should be defending. Volgograd isn't something I should have been doing. I've been on the wrong side all this time. And now I've got a chance to change that." He looked over at her. "So...what about you?"

Merau glanced at them both with her hands behind her head, leaning back comfortably against the wall. "Are you serious about that, Grey?"

"Dead serious."

She arched an eyebrow. "Aren't you the same guy who was all gung-ho patriotic about kicking these guys' asses?"

"That was before I knew about all of this," he said, with another wave of his hand. "But, look, both of you. I'm willing to take her up on that offer, but I don't want to just bail out on the two of you. You're my friends and I don't want to just let you two rot in a cell while I go free. So I want you two to come with me."

"C-Come with you?" Erin squeaked.

"Okay," said Merau with a shrug.

Grey blinked. "Okay? That's it?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Well, uh," he scratched the side of his head, "I just thought it would take more convincing, is all..."

"I don't wanna rot in this cell either," Merau answered with another shrug.

"Then...what about all those speeches you gave me about not thinking about the stuff I had to do in the Phantom Pain?"

"Eh. Who cares?"

Grey decided that he would just take that for what it was worth and turned back towards Erin. "What about you?"

She stared back in disbelief. "Y-You want me to defect?" She shook her head. "I, I can't do that, Grey, what about my father—"

"They're not gonna do anything about that," Merau scoffed. "Not with all the chaos going down on Earth."

"No," Erin protested, "it's...he sent me here so that I could learn discipline, and if I jump ship—"

"Then you'll have proven you learned something else," Grey said. "Doing the right thing." He knelt down next to her and put his hands on her shoulders. "You saw what they were doing in those labs. You saw those kids. I know you didn't believe me about Volgograd before, but maybe now you do. If you jump ship now, you're not a traitor or a coward, you're just doing the right thing. Your father will have to understand that. And if he's as good a man as you say he is, he'll be proud of you for that."

"And if he's not," Merau added, "then you never needed his approval anyway."

"Just...think about it," Grey said, and sat back with a sigh as she buried her face in her arms again.

—

"They're probably awaiting reinforcements," explained Rau Le Creuset on the gantry over the hangar where the Gundam Eclipse was waiting. "Gerhardt von Oldendorf is a person of relative importance in the Alliance's bureaucracy. If nothing else, he has knowledge that makes him dangerous and connections that make him valuable. Djibril probably wants him close at hand."

Emily shifted the weight of her helmet in the crook of her arm and looked down anxiously at the waiting Eclipse. "So I'll have to work quickly."

"Yes. But one battleship and sixteen mobile suits should pose little challenge to you."

Emily frowned. "How do I know he'll even be willing to talk...?"

"You'll just have to make that happen yourself." He gestured to the hangar. "They'll be opening the door soon. It's time to go."

With a resigned sigh, Emily hopped over the guardrail and pushed off towards the Eclipse's open cockpit. Rau watched her go with a smile. It was always good to see loose ends get tied up.

—

"What do you mean the Eclipse just took off?" sputtered Shinn. Athrun stood in front of him in the corridor, breathless, and gestured over his shoulder.

"In one of the Althea's loading bays. They saw Emily head out."

"The hell's she doing, going off on her own?" Shinn grumbled as he turned around. "Come on, let's go find Meyrin. We'll have to go after her."

"I heard them say she was on course for L4," Athrun added. "And the base logs showed that a warship carrying some kind of VIP had gone off towards L4 at the end of the battle here. So..."

They put two and two together, and Shinn cringed.

"Well, now we _really_ have to find Meyrin."

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"And they're alone?" asked Valentine, standing imperiously over the sensor officer hunched over his console in Messiah's control room.

"Yes ma'am," he answered, "no other signals. Just the _Minerva_."

Valentine frowned and glanced at Kira, who crossed his arms. "Trajectory?"

"Towards Lagrange Point 4, sir." He paused. "We picked up an Alliance IFF there too, and a smaller launch from Althea about an hour ago, headed in the same direction."

"The _Minerva_ on its own..." She glanced at Kira. "It's an opportunity."

Kira felt his stomach turn at the idea. With those new Gundams, fighting them would not be easy, and the _Minerva_ itself made for a formidable foe as well. And then there were the pilots. Athrun, Shinn, Rau, that damned Angel of Death...

He nodded all the same. With the _Seraphim_ gone, ZAFT had four _Eternal_-class cruisers left. Valentine would never part with the _Deliverance_, and the soldiers of FAITH had let him down in the past, but perhaps this time they could make it work. Whatever damage he could do now was damage he didn't have to do later on.

"In that case," Kira said, "I'm taking the _Absolution_, the _Athens_, and the _Saint Josephine_. And I want Zero-Two in on this as well."

He stalked out of the control room. The Vega Freedom would have to taste blood again.

—

**En route to Lagrange Point 4**

_She will be our angel of death._

Emily ground her teeth as the voice swelled in her mind. Yes, she was his angel of death, she was his pet soldier that slaughtered people for his sick ambition. That was her power, forged at the cost of her sanity.

It was all there in the files Meyrin had given her, but she hadn't really learned anything new. She understood already what had happened to her, and the rest was just detail. She'd had punishing training throughout her childhood, pushing her to the limits of human endurance and dragging her back from the brink with medical technology before the consequences could set in. They'd sunken it all into her subconscious, left her with fear and anxiety towards the world around her, cut her off from her own sister, isolated her from her fellow humans. They'd broken her in every way they could and filled in the cracks with steel and fire, until she was nothing but a tool.

Maybe Rau was right. Maybe a world that would do that to her deserved to be destroyed. Maybe a world that would do that to her _had_ to be destroyed if a better one was to take its place. Or maybe it wouldn't. Who knew. Who cared.

She still had one way to find out. She wasn't the only one who had suffered like this. Lily was an Extended, and she'd just seen the horrors they had endured at Althea Crater. Rau was a product of one man's greed, and the legacy of that was a body that slowly betrayed him.

And then there was Zero-Two. Her mirror image. Created to be everything Emily was supposed to be. Of all the souls she'd encountered, surely she would understand. Surely her mother, reaching back from the grave through the vessel of this clone, would be able to comfort her. Surely she wouldn't have to be isolated.

But until then...there was her father.

_She will be our angel of death._

"Yes, father," she whispered, "I will."

—

To be continued...


	42. Phase 42: To Conquer Death

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 42 - To Conquer Death

—

**June 29th, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"I can tell you up front, ladies and gentlemen, that if Philippe Arnault is President of the Eurasian Federation now, then Eurasia is probably going to side with Meyers on this," Joseph Copland explained, to a packed conference room of Resistance leaders and officers. He was a bit disappointed that Meyrin and her team couldn't have been here, but they had other things to deal with, and he certainly couldn't begrudge her that. "Arnault never trusted Djibril or Blue Cosmos to begin with. He was against the whole idea of Alliance in the first place. He didn't even vote for the new Eurasian constitution."

In one of the nearby chairs, Admiral Barton arched a graying eyebrow. "That ornery ol' bastard's on _our_ side now?"

"In a manner of speaking," answered Copland. "I don't know what's going on in South Africa, but if that's the only nation left on Djibril's side, then he's in bad shape. So I think we can safely say that the Earth Alliance is now defunct."

A chill swept over the room. The news of their enemy's collapse was supposed to be cause for celebration. Perhaps it might have been, if anyone had trusted Robert Meyers, if Lord Djibril weren't still alive...and if ZAFT weren't around.

Copland swallowed a knot of anxiety in his throat. "In the meantime," he said, "we will need to be careful about who we trust among the world's new leaders. This is a chaotic time. A time ripe for the settling of old scores. And we will have to be wary, because today's ally could easily become tomorrow's tyrant."

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, en route to Lagrange Point 4**

The master office aboard the _Fortuna_ was darkened when Kayla stepped inside. This seemed to be how Vice Marshal Yamato spent his scarce free time of late. To most of ZAFT, he was their tireless champion, but she saw the vulnerable side of the Coordinators' hero, and it never failed to unnerve her. Some terrified part of her was convinced that he would break at any moment.

Kira Yamato glanced up tiredly at her as the door slid shut. "What is it?"

"The _Absolution_'s group just hailed us, sir," she said. "We're about to rendezvous, and we're about twenty-six hours out from Lagrange Point 4." Kira nodded, and Kayla took a tentative step forward. "Sir...are you alright?"

Kira shrugged. "You ever heard of a place called the Mendel colony?"

"No, sir."

"I thought so." He slumped back into his seat. "It's...got something of a personal connection to me." Kira paused, searching for words, and Kayla was about to say something when he spoke up again. "It's where I was born, you could say."

A shudder went down Kayla's spine. If few people in ZAFT knew of their standard-bearer's moments of weakness, even fewer knew of his past.

"It's not important," he added quickly, as though sensing her unease. "It's just...stirring up some old memories. I'm sure you understand."

"Of course, sir."

"Inform me when we're in range of L4. We'll wait and see what the mobile suit and the Alliance ship are doing before we intervene."

"Yes sir."

She slipped back out of the office with a quick salute and shivered again.

—

It was hard to be one of a people that had lost three wars in seven years. It weighed on the soul and made one doubt one's own worthiness to exist.

Kara Guinness shook her head as she stared out at the stars on the _Fortuna_'s internal observation deck. They hadn't lost this war yet. They'd only lost two. The Valentine War definitely counted as a loss. And this one...well, blasphemous as it may have been, she knew just enough history to know that a plan that relied exclusively on a superweapon was probably going to fail.

She shook her head again. That was defeatist talk, and in this war, defeat meant death. There was no way the Naturals would let the Coordinators live after what had happened in this war. They would just have to count on disunity and overwhelming force to salvage victory for themselves. It was a bitter thought to consider that for all their technological and genetic superiority, the Coordinators were still standing on the brink of extinction.

Kara leaned against the railing and pondered the idea of life on the lam. Maybe Juarez had been right. Maybe they should have stayed at Mars.

Juarez. She closed her eyes and wondered how he managed to stay as calm as he did, with as many misgivings as he had about all this. He'd calmed down Gary and interceded in their fights, even as the ghastly things they did here gnawed at him. And they were starting to gnaw at her too—because for all that killing, the Coordinators were no safer.

And that, really, was the worst thought of all. The thought that for all that had happened, she was _still_ on the wrong side.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Nana Buluku**_**, near Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

"It's quite simple," Gerhardt grumbled as he leaned back in his seat on the _Nana Buluku_'s bridge. "If the world is going to pot, we should get out of the way and see where the chips fall. Djibril's days are likely numbered, but he's had years to prepare for this eventuality, so I'm not counting him out yet."

Irene looked skeptical, and Montgomery looked even less impressed. "He has the Phantom Pain fleet and whatever loyalists in the regular forces that can make it to him," Montgomery sputtered. "He's lost Daedalus, he's lost the Requiem, he's lost Heaven's Base...what else does he have left?"

"I don't know," Gerhardt said with a shrug, "and that's just it. So I say we wait and see what happens."

"And if the winner here is someone who's not interested in extending a welcoming committee to us?" Irene asked.

"Then we'll deal with it when we get there," Gerhardt answered. "But since we don't know what we'll be dealing with—"

"Captain," the sensor officer interrupted, "I'm picking up a heat signature on the infrared sensor, five o'clock, approaching fast."

"Put it on screen," Montgomery ordered—and the bridge went silent in palpable horror as the image flickered to life on the auxiliary screen. Glowering back, eyes glowing and sapphire blue wings of light shimmering in the darkness of space, was the Gundam Eclipse.

"She...she _followed_ us?" Irene sputtered. "But—how the hell did she _know_—"

"Launch all mobile suits! All hands, prepare for anti-mobile suit combat!" Montgomery barked. "It's only one mobile suit!"

Gerhardt remained motionless in his seat, glowering at the screen.

_Well, well, well, so you've decided to come have a little chat..._

—

Sixteen Dark Windams up ahead. Four with Doppelhorn Striker packs, two with IWSP packs, two with Lightning Striker packs, the rest on their own. Emily clenched her fists around the Eclipse's controls. She had almost expected her father to have some horrible secret waiting in that warship's hangar, just on the off chance she followed him. Maybe he still did. Or maybe he just wasn't omniscient after all.

She gunned the booster and rocketed forward. The Windams darted apart; the Doppelhorns and the two Lightning Windams backed away with their electromagnetic cannons extended, while the rest charged forward. The two IWSP Windams charged in close with a fusillade of machinegun bullets; they bounced harmlessly off the Phase Shift armor. Emily darted down and let the two Windams attack nothing but afterimages, then rocketed back up behind them and whipped around.

The two Windams turned towards her—only to be slashed in half by a sweeping blow from the Eclipse's Dragon's Tail heat rod. And as they exploded, the black Gundam whirled around to use its beam shield to swat aside a salvo of shells from the Doppelhorns. The Lightning Windams opened fire next. The Eclipse danced between their shells and charged in close at the remaining Phantom Pain machines.

Again the Alliance mobile suits broke formation—this time as the sweeping blasts of the _Nana Buluku_'s Gottfried cannons coursed through the battlefield. Emily spared a quick glare towards the warship on which her father was hiding and then turned back towards the Windams. The Doppelhorns fired again, but caught only afterimages, and the Eclipse squeezed off a pulsing blast from its Dragon's Fire launcher that swept through one of the Doppelhorn Windams and blew it apart.

"If this is all you've sent to fight me, I'm disappointed," Emily snarled, and whirled around again to face the remaining mobile suits. One of the Windams lunged up from behind her, beam saber raised; the Eclipse turned with a flash of light and curled its heat rod around the Windam's waist, then wheeled around again and slammed the first Windam into a second. The two mobile suits struggled to free themselves—and before they could, another blast from the Dragon's Fire evaporated them both.

Another Windam slid in from the side, beam rifle at the ready; the Eclipse ducked beneath its fire and backed away as the Windams intensified their blasts. Emily searched the black skies for an opening and found it as the _Nana Buluku_ drove forward with a wave of Gottfried fire.

"Are you finally afraid of me, father?" she asked. The Eclipse swatted a Gottfried blast aside with its beam shield and wove its way through the fire. The Windams opened fire; their blasts caught more afterimages, and the Eclipse spiraled its way through the blanket of beam shots and stormed back down towards its foes. With a crash, the Eclipse stowed its launcher in favor of its gleaming beam sword; with another screech, it swept the blade through one of the Doppelhorn Windams and sliced it in half.

A Lightning Windam lined up its electromagnetic cannon behind the Eclipse, pointed squarely at its back; Emily jerked the controls to the side and ripped the mobile suit in two with her heat rod. Another Windam swept in from behind, beam saber in hand, only to be stabbed through the chest by the Eclipse's beam sword.

"You should have known that something like _this_ wouldn't stop me," she growled, and turned towards the surviving seven Windams as they backed away towards their mothership. She barreled through the _Nana Buluku_'s desperate fire, lanced her way past the Windams' fire, and ripped a third Doppelhorn Windam out of the sky with her heat rod. The final one sidled in behind her, pointing its cannons at her back for a point-blank blast—and then the Eclipse backflipped over it and sawed it in half lengthwise with its beam sword.

The second Lightning Windam backed away and fired back desperately with its electromagnetic cannon; the remaining Doppelhorn Windam and the four regular Dark Windams tightened their formation and intensified their fire. Emily scowled back as she drew the Dragon's Fire again and fired, breaking their formation apart—and with another blast, the Doppelhorn Windam vanished.

"And as for you," she added, glowering back at the surviving Windams, "I don't have _time_ for _you!_"

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Nana Buluku**_

The _Nana Buluku_ shuddered as one of the Windams, stabbed through the chest by the Gundam Eclipse's beam sword, exploded close to the ship's hull. Gerhardt von Oldendorf scowled as he steadied himself against a bulkhead. So she'd gotten better. Wonderful.

The ship's hangar was in chaos as he arrived on one of the gantries. The mechanics were scattered throughout the ship trying to repair what damage had already been done, and the rest were trying to prepare the escape launches, but with so few left to the task, one of the launches was completely unattended. And that was the convenient part, as he quietly touched down next to it and approached the open hatch.

Gerhardt slipped inside, shut the hatch, settled himself into the operator's seat, and checked his suit pockets. A lone handgun and eight clips would have to serve him well for the confrontation he knew was coming, but like this, stuck on a warship that was rapidly losing its fighting strength, there was no way it would work in his favor. He would have to shift the battlefield.

The _Nana Buluku_ rocked again. He quietly jetted the launch over towards one of the catapults. The mobile suits would distract her well enough. The catapult door swung open and the launch wormed its way out towards the colony.

—

The fifth Dark Windam died in a fiery explosion that left only the two regulars and the lone Doppelhorn Windam left in front of the faltering _Nana Buluku_. Emily circled around them and seized her chance, rushing in to run the Doppelhorn through with a quick stroke from the Dragon's Tail. The other two broke ranks and showered her with beam fire from both sides.

Down below, the _Nana Buluku_ promptly flickered and vanished from view—but the terrified humans inside did not, and Emily fixed their presences in her mind as she darted through the Windams' fire. With a shriek of twisting metal, she plunged the beam sword down into the ship's hull and struck the missile stores, then rocketed away as a thundering explosion ripped the top off the vessel and brought it back to the visible world. The two Windams took cover behind their shields—just as the Eclipse leveled off the Dragon's Fire and drilled a blast through the ship's bridge tower and down through its engine block.

Vast arms of fire ripped apart the _Nana Buluku_ and the two Windams disappeared within the flames. Emily turned towards the colony, where one more human presence could be felt. That one she knew well. Of course he had gotten away during the fighting. That was only his nature.

She fired the booster and rocketed down towards Mendel.

—

**Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

Gerhardt von Oldendorf did not fail to notice the way Mendel colony shook as something made a hard landing inside it. So the _Nana Buluku_ was gone. So were Irene and Montgomery. Well, too bad for them. He had a rendezvous with destiny.

Trapped in here by his rebellious and angry daughter, but perhaps there was still hope. He checked the clip in his pistol. Perhaps he could talk her down. The poor girl always had longed for normal parents. But too much had passed between them for any pretense at familial love.

So perhaps he could guide her towards her destructive destiny. She was essentially already there anyway, and it seemed as though all she needed was one more push in the right direction. ZAFT had deployed that captured clone of Lorelei, so clearly they knew about her family past. Surely it was driving her insane to fight the Newtype specter of her beloved mother. A mind like that didn't need much persuasion to start thinking the entire world was out to get it.

He clicked off the pistol safety. And if she couldn't be persuaded...well, there were alternatives.

—

Shuddering with fear at the shadows before her, Emily tightened the belt on her leg that held her extra clips and ran a thumb over the safety of her smooth ZAFT-issue handgun. Hopefully those sporadic target practice sessions with Viveka would pay off today. Hopefully they wouldn't be needed and Gerhardt would just step on a conveniently live power line or something.

Emily left her helmet behind in the stale air of Mendel as she proceeded forward through a loading bay. The whole colony was seething with the unnerving feeling of abandonment. It felt like a graveyard.

But this was where that one man had been born. Kira Yamato. The creation of what Rau believed was a truly evil scientific experiment...not that the thought of artificial wombs made Emily feel any better.

Emily instinctively threw herself to the ground as the bolt of warning went up her spine, just as a gunshot rang out and a bullet slammed into the wall over her head.

"Usually you always tried to _avoid_ me, Emily," the dark voice of Gerhardt von Oldendorf echoed out from the shadows. "It's not like you to go _looking_ for me."

Emily snapped her own gun up and fired at the spot where the presence lurked, but it moved away, further into the darkness.

"I've changed," she said.

"So you have," Gerhardt agreed with a chuckle.

She moved forward through another loading bay—and up above, standing on a gantry, Gerhardt opened fire again. Emily threw herself behind an old shipping container as the bullets rattled across the metal surfaces. She looked again as the gunshots ceased, and felt his presence retreating further into the colony; she hopped back to her feet and made her way up to an old cargo elevator, and it sputtered to life as she started it up. The familiar tug of gravity began to set in as it descended into the colony, and Emily felt her stomach turn as the presence came to a stop somewhere underneath those dusty, orange skies.

The doors slid open and the gunshots began again. Emily dove back down again and grunted as gravity did the rest. She picked her way to another convenient crate and fired back; the presence slipped away again.

"But I don't quite blame you for all that's happened," Gerhardt's echoing voice added. "Not even destroying my ship. I know you were only following the lead of your puppet masters in the Resistance. As you always did."

Emily moved forward, crouched low to the ground, towards the rusty façade of an old building. The lights were off as she stepped inside, and ducked again just before the shots rang out. She popped back up from behind a couch in a reception room and fired back towards the desk; a dark shape ducked below her fire and escaped through a side door, and Emily sprinted after it. More shots sounded; she threw herself against the wall as the bullets whistled by her.

"Even now, with this pretense of independence, you're just doing what someone told you, aren't you?" Gerhardt chuckled.

"If you're trying to scare me—" Emily started, only to be interrupted by another round of gunshots.

"I hardly need to _try_ to scare you, Emily," Gerhardt sneered. "It's always been that way."

Emily got back to her feet and started into the hallway, after the retreating presence and through the shadows. "If I'm here, then I must not be _that_ scared of you."

"That sounds like a challenge."

She rounded a corner and flung herself to the floor as the bullets flew again. Emily ground her teeth and inched forward far enough to fire back—but the black shape ahead of her slipped away down a staircase. She vaulted over the railing and landed hard on a thin metal walkway down below—and blinked in surprise at the new room before her. Rows upon rows of clear glass tanks...with human fetuses floating inside.

"What...?" she started, and then ducked again as the firing resumed.

"A lovely place destiny chose for our little showdown, isn't it?" came Gerhardt's voice. "Rather fitting for our circumstances, I think."

Emily pulled herself back to her feet and focused on the presence's location. "Are you going to tell me I've got something to do with Kira Yamato?"

"Oh, heavens no," Gerhardt laughed, "Ulen Hibiki was far before your time. And besides, why would I taint my angel of death with _that_ man's research?" More gunshots; Emily dove back behind cover and groaned at the impact on her shoulder. "Our presence here is ironic for an entirely different reason."

Emily's eyes followed as the presence stalked around a walkway, inching closer to her.

"You're looking at a family, of sorts," Gerhardt went on. "Hibiki and his wife combined their own DNA to create these test subjects, to produce a Coordinator that perfectly exhibited the traits it was supposed to have. And there were quite a few failures along the way."

With a start, Emily sprang back to her feet and opened fire, but the bullets bounced uselessly off metal surfaces as Gerhardt took cover. He shot back and forced Emily behind the protective bulk of one of the tanks.

"It's the symbol of what _my_ family was," Gerhardt said. "A science project. A set of tools for a plan. Your mother understood that, but it's such a pity she never imparted that to you."

"That's because she loved us!" Emily snapped.

"You poor girl," Gerhardt chuckled. "You always wanted us to just be a family. All you really wanted was for me to be your father."

"Well, why weren't you?" Emily shot back.

"Would you have preferred me to lie?"

Emily clenched her teeth and fought to keep the tears out of her eyes. That had hurt a lot more than she thought it would have, even after all that had passed between them.

"You never did let go of that hope," he continued. "That I would be the smiling father, bursting with pride at his two baby girls, brimming with love for his beautiful wife. That mommy would get better and everything would fall into place. But it never did, did it? It was a shame she died so soon. I imagine I could have found other ways to use her—"

Emily leapt out of hiding with a shout and emptied her gun in Gerhardt's direction—but the presence moved around to the other side of the tank behind which he hid and fired back, forcing her back behind cover and scrambling to replace the empty clip.

Gerhardt's chuckling voice filled the room. "Touched a nerve, did I?"

"Don't you _dare_ say that about her!" Emily snarled.

"Well, it's quite refreshing to see that you've finally developed a spine, Emily," Gerhardt replied. "I was afraid that might always be holding you back."

Emily choked back another tear. "How can you do this to me...?"

"Quite easily!" boomed Gerhardt's voice. "I have a more important concern than being the nice little father you were hoping for, after all."

Emily sprang back up with another blast of fire; Gerhardt slipped away amid the tanks and fired back. Emily yelped in surprise as the glass overhead shattered and a wave of sterile-smelling chemicals gushed past her. She returned fire, but Gerhardt ducked into the shadows.

"It's dreadfully ironic the Alliance decided to start calling you the Angel of Death," Gerhardt continued. "And it was when you joined the war that the sands began to shift beneath Lord Djibril. It was after you came onto the scene that the Resistance on Earth met its end, and ZAFT returned, and the world went careening towards Armageddon again. But always, you found a way to survive. Never managed to change the world for the better, oh no, never really had a true victory, even now. Not with ZAFT still around. But all the same..." Gerhardt moved again; Emily fired at the shadows but once again came up empty, and her father shot back to force her back behind cover. "I must say, Emily, you've made me a believer in destiny."

"Then how come I'm not fighting for _you?_" Emily snapped.

"Emily, you wound me!" Gerhardt laughed. "You think I was so small-minded in creating you?" She darted out from hiding again and scrambled behind another tank as the firing started up again. "I had much grander plans for you than _that_. After all, we live in a world that demands nothing less." Footsteps; another gunshot rang out and Emily flung herself behind another tank, while keeping her eyes fixed on the presence's location. "Do you really think I intended you to simply be the Eurasian Federation's pet super-soldier? Do you think I spent so many years grooming and training you for something as petty and temporary as national glory? There's a reason I called you the Angel of Death, you know."

"So I'd be _your_ little killer?"

Gerhardt answered with a bullet that rang against the tank and splintered the glass overhead. Emily sprinted over to the next tank as the bullets streaked past. "Anyone can kill a human being. But institutions, empires, races, nations...those require something _special_. Someone with that kind of destructive force doesn't just _happen_, and even a human with talents like yours isn't much use without a weapon. So my compliments, really, to whoever decided to give you that Twilight Gundam, and whoever built you the Midnight. It's almost as if I were directing them myself."

Emily ground her teeth. "They gave me my Gundam to _end_ the war."

"And I'm sure you will," chuckled Gerhardt, "and the next one, and the one after that, and so on. Doesn't mean a thing, really." More footsteps. "Look at this place, if you want an example. A place where humans were manufactured like mobile suits, built to order, discarded when a part was faulty. Or think back to Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? Ten million innocent people, murdered to satisfy an angry people's vendetta?" Emily leapt back out of hiding and opened fire, driving Gerhardt to safety behind yet another tank; he shot back and forced Emily back to the floor, and father and daughter both scrambled for cover under the hail of bullets. "Or you could fill in the blanks yourself. I heard all about your adventures in Karelia too, you know. And _something_ sure got under your skin in the Pacific Ocean, when you slaughtered that ZAFT remnant force."

"What's your point?" Emily growled.

Gerhardt replied with a laugh. "You still don't understand...well, I suppose that never really was your forte anyway." Emily frowned at the sound of an empty clip being replaced. "Then again, not understanding what you're doing hasn't stopped you from doing it so far."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why, I'm talking about the past few months of your life, little Emily. You've been smashing your way across the Earth Sphere, you and your little Resistance friends. Tearing down everything. You disintegrated the Earth Alliance, the vastest and most powerful dictatorship in history. You got the Resistance wiped out. I'm sure you'll do the same to ZAFT. None can oppose your power, after all. Soon there won't be anything left. It'll be total anarchy. Relentless civil war. And the grand experiment of the Cosmic Era will end."

Emily fell to her knees. Total anarchy. Everything would burn. Her mind sent her back to that flaming crater at Anori, and Rau Le Creuset standing before it. Everything would have to burn, he'd said—

"You know as well as I do that this world has gone wrong," he continued. "It needs to be corrected. We had Murata Azrael and his height of resentment, and Patrick Zala and his height of arrogance. We had Gilbert Dullindal and his height of tyranny, we had Lord Djibril and his height of hatred, and we had Chiao Xu and his height of delusion. Now we have Valentine Sunogachi and her height of bloodlust. Do you think the other leaders will do any better? Do you think Robert Meyers is going to correct the world?"

Everything would have to burn, he'd said, but...

"So we'll just have to burn it all down," Gerhardt said. "Wipe it all out. The Coordinators, the Naturals, the Alliance, ZAFT, all of it. And especially you Newtypes."

Emily looked up at the word. "What...?"

"Yes, you Newtypes, the greatest failure of all," snarled Gerhardt. He lunged out from behind his cover and opened fire, driving Emily back. She answered with a volley of bullets and the two combatants returned to a tense standoff. "I've been watching you Newtypes all my life. I thought you were going to be different from these mere Coordinators. Something special. Something truly able to turn humanity towards its better angels. But you're no better than us. Just look at the ones we've got. Kira Yamato. Crayt Markav. Shinn Asuka. None of them ever transcended the failures of their inferiors. Otherwise this war wouldn't be going on. And yet you Newtypes have power. You yourself are proof of that, Emily."

Emily picked herself up and darted towards the stairs, bullets banging against the walls all the way. She dove to the floor and crawled behind the staircase; up ahead, she could see Gerhardt climbing a different set of stairs, gun trained on her direction.

"So that was your master plan for me?" Emily snapped. "Killing Newtypes?"

"Isn't it ironic?" Gerhardt laughed. "Trying to wipe out the Newtypes, and yet I went to all that trouble to breed the finest one I could!"

Emily flung herself up onto the overhead gantry and fired at the figure across the way. Gerhardt ducked towards one of the side corridors; Emily gave chase and threw herself against the wall as he fired back. "Were you just _jealous_ or something?"

"Jealous? Of _you?_" Gerhardt scoffed. "A super-soldier named after the Angel of Death who suffers whenever she kills an enemy, and you think I'd be _jealous?_ Emily, please, I didn't raise you to be _that_ stupid."

"You never raised me at all!" Emily shouted.

"And perhaps I _should_ have!" Gerhardt fired back. "Because if I must sound _one_ note of disappointment, it's over your failure to realize _that_ part of your destiny!" Emily ducked back out into the corridor and flung herself into a recessed doorway as the shooting started again. "But I guess it's not all lost. After all, ZAFT has that clone of Lorelei's—yes, don't think I don't know about that too." Emily felt her blood run cold. How...? "Now _that_ is a Newtype who has gone decidedly _off_ her rails. But I'm sure you can correct that. You've proven quite adept at exterminating troublesome people, after all."

"No!" Emily yelled back. "I won't! I'm going to save her!"

"Save her?" Gerhardt sputtered with laughter. "_Save_ her? Good God, Emily! They told me you'd be kind of crazy if you were brought of incubation early, but I wasn't expecting you to be _this_ bad."

Emily lunged back out into the corridor and opened fire again. Gerhardt retreated under a hail of bullets into a loading bay, piled high with rusty, disused shipping containers.

"No, Emily, I can guarantee that you won't be saving her," he chuckled, "even if those Newtype signals have your confused little brain thinking it's dear old mommy on the other side of the battlefield."

"Shut up," Emily hissed.

"Because it's not, you know," Gerhardt went on. "Mommy dearest was just too weak to keep up with the demands of my little project. Remember?"

"Shut up," Emily shot back, louder.

"And to think, technically, it was all your fault," Gerhardt added. "She never did recover from giving birth to you—"

"_Shut up!_" Emily screamed—

She abruptly vaulted over her cover and unloaded her gun into the space over Gerhardt's head. A loud snap sounded through the room and one of the crates gave way and slammed down onto Gerhardt's position. He let out a cry and his gun clattered across the floor. Emily sprinted over as she hurriedly snapped a fresh clip into place and rounded a corner.

There was her father, pinned beneath a fallen box, his gun lying several feet of out of reach. He glowered up at his daughter and cracked a smirk.

"There's...the weapon I built..."

Emily scowled back and put the gun to his head. "You don't have any right to say that to me."

"Why not?" Gerhardt asked, his voice low and labored. "I built you...after all..." He chuckled and then winced at the effort. "Go on back...to your master. A-and tell them..."

"I don't _have_ a master," she snarled. "I'm my own person."

Gerhardt grinned back, blood leaking from the side of his mouth. "No you're not," he breathed. "I...d-designed you...that way..."

Emily pressed the barrel of her gun into his forehead. "You said I was only meant to destroy things," she snapped. "But you're wrong. The most important thing isn't what you destroy. It's what you build in its place."

She pressed the trigger, but Gerhardt von Oldendorf still died with a smirk on his face.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, near Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

The hangar was silent as the Gundam Eclipse's hatch swung open and Emily stepped out. There to greet her were two of the _Minerva_'s infantry, who promptly put her hands behind her back and led her away.

Down below, Viveka crossed her arms and watched her disappear into a corridor. "I know we can't have her running off like that," she said, "but the brig? Really?"

"It's standard procedure," answered Athrun. "In an actual military it'd be even worse."

Viveka shook her head. "I don't know what she was going after..."

"I do," Athrun said. "She was going after your father."

Silence descended over them both as Viveka was thunderstruck. "Our..._father?_ She went _after_ him?"

Athrun waved a hand. "That wreckage we found looks like it came from a _Girty Lue_-class ship, and Althea's logs showed that he did escape on one of those. So it sounds like she hunted him down. I can only assume she killed him or something." He looked over at her uncomfortably. "...I...guess."

Viveka frowned and looked up at the doorway she'd just gone through. "I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"I understand." He put a hand over her shoulder. "I had an asshole for a father too. I got over it pretty quickly when he died."

She leaned against him with a sigh. "If she went after him, though, and if she came out of the colony...does that mean she confronted him, like, in person or something?"

Athrun looked grimly up at the Eclipse. "I suspect she'll have a lot to think about."

—

**June 30th, CE 77 - The White House, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

"...of course, Michael," Meyers said as he leaned back in his desk chair in the Oval Office, phone in hand. "Of course...I understand, these things take time...yes...alright, goodbye, Michael." He hung up with a satisfied sigh.

In the other chair, Admiral MacIntyre raised an eyebrow. "Who was that?"

"President Okubo of the South African Union. The no-confidence vote passed and a short while later, they found Manuel in his office, dead. A new government is in the process of forming. It might take a while, but the opposition is quite happy to reverse Manuel's policies, including foreign affairs." He smiled. "South Africa is in the bag too."

MacIntyre looked down awkwardly at the world map on Meyers' desk. He could pretend otherwise, but it was clear that they had destroyed the Earth Alliance. The Middle East was clamoring for independence, the African Community was already restarting, the Republic of East Asia was in talks to reestablish the Equatorial Union and the Oceania Union, the royal family of the Kingdom of Scandinavia was agitating for independence...it was a wonder the Atlantic Federation itself wasn't coming apart at the seams.

"Djibril still has his Phantom Pain fleet in the Debris Belt, plus the loyalists he's scrounged up," MacIntyre warned. "And you know as well as I do what's lurking at Daedalus. If he managed to make off with even half of it, he'll be a serious threat. Even if the world's nations aren't on his side, he's still dangerous."

"Well, it's not like we'd be doing this alone," Meyers answered, staring skeptically at the admiral. "ZAFT might run across him first, and if not, there's always your...friends."

"_They_ cannot destroy Lord Djibril for us," MacIntyre answered.

Meyers looked unconvinced, and MacIntyre sat back anxiously as he began talking about something else. Of course, with the world as it was now, perhaps it would have to be Copland who took out Djibril.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_**, Debris Belt**

"Our fleet is exactly seventy-one ships strong, not counting the thirty cargo ships," reported Admiral Stone, "but we expect to add up to another twenty ships in the next few days. Most significantly, we also have reason to believe that Admiral Masorin might bring us another twenty ships from the Eurasian fleet, if he can get away from Eurasian intelligence."

The conference room of the _Ahura Mazda_ fell silent as Stone finished his report and sat back down. Lord Djibril leaned forward.

"In that case, we'll need to break out the cargo," he said. "What did we manage to evacuate from Daedalus?"

Stone consulted his tablet. "Six Destroys, six Zamzazars, two Gelzuges, and thirty-two Euclids," he answered, "plus the whole of Colonel Hardin's Immortals regiment."

Djibril blew out a sigh through his nose. "I was hoping to save them for use against ZAFT..." He glanced at the other officer in the room. "What about the Vishnu?"

At the other side of the table, Crayt Markav twitched at the name. Djibril almost suspected someone had deliberately named it that way just to annoy her. "The mobile armor is prepared."

Lord Djibril leaned forward, mind working frantically. On Earth, his opponents had moved with astonishing speed to purge the toadies and minions he had stashed throughout the world's governments. Why had he overlooked Meyers? One bullet was all it would have taken.

He shook his head as Stone launched into a discourse on the ways they could array their fleet. ZAFT was still out there and he had no idea what they were planning, but surely Sunogachi was giddy with joy at the spectacle of the Earth Alliance crumbling before her. Whatever plans she had were almost certainly being accelerated. That fool Meyers was putting everything at risk to satisfy his own ambition. As though _he_ knew how to deal with these barbarians.

But it wasn't over. As long as he could retake Daedalus, rebuild the relay points, repair the Requiem, then all was not lost. Not yet.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, near Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

Yolant Kent watched with a heavy sigh as another set of missiles were loaded into the Fujin Gundam's hip armor. The downside of these new Gundams bristling with weapons was that it made for a whole lot more reloading in between battles.

Nearby, Sting Oakley appeared to agree with a loud yawn. "At least it's running well," he sighed. "Man, I can't tell you how good it's been to be back in action again."

Yolant peered down at the Fujin's joints. "And we never had time to run any tests on these things," he said. "Guess the guys at Gigafloat were more thorough than I thought."

"Or we got lucky," Sting added. He glanced across the hangar. "So what was up with the Gabriel?"

"You mean the Eclipse?"

"Whatever."

Yolant shrugged. "Had the kind of damage you'd expect from a mobile suit and anti-ship battle. We looked over that wreckage too, it was definitely from a _Girty Lue_, but if you're asking what she was doing out there, I have no idea. She was pretty thorough, though. No survivors."

Sting frowned. "Well, whatever. I just can't wait to leave. That colony gives me the creeps."

"Yeah, I hear ya."

—

Silence and tension reigned in the _Minerva_'s brig as Shinn Asuka stared down at Emily, arms crossed, as she sat in her cell.

"No matter what your feelings about it were, you can't do that," Shinn said. "Not without telling anyone."

"I know," Emily said.

"Then why did you do it?"

Emily glanced up at him. "Because I had to."

"No you didn't. He had one ship and sixteen mobile suits. There was nothing he was ever gonna do—"

"I had to go face him," Emily said, and fixed Shinn with a glare. "It's my business."

"Not when we need you around here," Shinn said, pointing towards the floor, ire rising. "What if the whole thing had been a trap? You would have been isolated, way out here, on your own. You might have been captured or killed." He narrowed his eyes. "You remember what happened the last time you were captured?"

Emily glowered back. "I still had to go."

Shinn frowned. "What for?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"No," Emily turned away, and Shinn did not fail to notice the anger bubbling up within her, "you really wouldn't."

Shinn opened his mouth to speak, but the feeling of another presence in the room stopped him, and he whirled around to find Rau Le Creuset standing in the doorway, looking grim.

"Perhaps we should leave her alone," he said. "After all, that's why they call it solitary confinement."

He swept out of the doorway, leaving Shinn behind to fume. He looked back one more time at Emily and then stalked away, after Rau.

Left behind, Emily leaned back against the wall and let the mask of defiance fade away. Solitary confinement was just what she needed right now—because she had a lot to think about.

—

"I know," Meyrin said on the bridge, slumped back in the captain's chair. "She's never done this before. I'm inclined to think it's a one-off thing."

"Well, one-off or not, we need to make it clear we won't tolerate this kind of thing," Abbey answered. "So, keep her in the brig for a couple of weeks and only let her out when she's needed."

Meyrin sighed. Crew discipline was a part of the captaincy she had never really had to learn. The _Minerva_'s crew were veterans of ZAFT, already disciplined and trained, and they had all just given up on trying to get Roxy to act like a soldier.

"What was she even out here for anyway?" Roxy spoke up, as though cued. "What's to see? It's just an old colony."

"Mendel was the site of shady genetics research twenty years ago," Abbey explained. "Ten years ago a biohazard broke out and it was evacuated and sterilized."

Roxy frowned. "Then what was Emily doing at this old shithole?"

"You'll have to ask her," Meyrin said with a grimace.

The conversation stopped as something from Burt's console began beeping. He checked the instruments and blinked in surprise.

"Captain, heat signatures at two o'clock. They look familiar..." He blinked again. "It's that ZAFT _Minerva_, and three _Eternal_-class cruisers."

Meyrin looked back towards the bridge windows. "Kira Yamato, huh...?"

"They're launching mobile suits," Burt added.

Of course ZAFT would take another swing at them, with the most fearsome units they had. Meyrin forced down the fear. This time her ship had ten state-of-the-art new mobile suits to fight that Freedom Gundam. And just in case...

"Alright," she said. "Issue Condition Red. All hands, prepare for anti-ship and anti-mobile suit combat. Roxy, send a message to Althea requesting reinforcements." She paused. "And someone let Emily out."

The bridge began to sink down to its combat level, and Meyrin settled back into the seat. It was time for a rematch.

—

To be continued...


	43. Phase 43: Commander of the Faithful

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 43 - Commander of the Faithful

—

**June 30th, CE 77 - ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_**, near Mendel Colony, Lagrange Point 4**

The _Fortuna_ hummed as it sliced forward through space, with the cerulean-painted _Absolution_, the cherry-red _Athens_, and the orange _Saint Josephine_ in formation around it. The mobile suits fanned out in front of the four warships, and on the _Fortuna_'s bridge, Lyle Markus settled back into the captain's chair. They had been easy enough to defeat once, with outdated mobile suits. And those new Gundams of theirs couldn't be _that_ special.

Of course, three years ago, the _Absolution_ had joined the _Minerva_ in another attack on a battleship full of dangerous renegades with high-performance mobile suits. Lyle tried to put those thoughts out of his mind.

"The operation will now begin," Lyle said. "All units, move forward and engage the enemy. _Absolution_, begin your run." He leaned forward and watched as the warships broke ranks and spread out, towards the _Minerva_.

—

The all too familiar rush of emotions swirled up Shinn Asuka's throat and threatened to drown out his senses. He clenched his teeth and fought down the temptation to boost ahead and launch into a frenzy. Not this time, no, they had a plan; they'd have to do it together.

He glanced over at the Celestial Justice, storming ahead in its mobile armor mode. How Athrun was staying so calm was beyond Shinn, as the images flashed by his eyes of his parents, of Mayu, of George, of Kika, of Lacus...and it wasn't as though Athrun didn't have people to avenge either.

The equally familiar bolt of warning went up his spine and the two Gundams darted apart as the Vega Freedom Gundam let loose a withering full burst of firepower from its mounted cannons and DRAGOONs. The blue weapons pods blasted off and started spinning a web of beam fire around the Zulfiqar, forcing it away; Shinn stormed through an opening with a scream and raised his sword high, and then slammed it down against the Freedom's beam shield.

"So!" he shouted. "Finally picking a fight, are you?"

On the auxiliary screen, the battle-scarred face of Kira Yamato scowled back. "You'll need more than a fancy Gundam to kill me."

"Then how about two?" Athrun added, and the Celestial Justice promptly transformed and showered the Freedom with beam fire. Kira darted away and wove a path through the blasts, as the DRAGOONs returned fire and put the Justice back on the defensive. Shinn charged in close and pounded the beam shield again; Kira stashed his beam rifles in favor of a saber and swung back, parried just in time by the Zulfiqar's sword.

"Don't think I've forgotten," Kira snarled. "I'm going to have to kill you both if this plan is going to work."

The Zulfiqar and Freedom clashed again. The DRAGOONs swarmed around the Justice, but Athrun dove past their fire and swept in from behind. Kira flared the Freedom's beam wings and drove the Justice back, then backed away from the Zulfiqar's furious sword swing and rocketed upward as the Justice opened fire.

"And of all the people I could have fought," Kira added, "I would have thought you two would understand!"

Engine blazing, the Zulfiqar launched itself up after the Freedom, and the two Gundams' blades slammed together again. "I understand _plenty!_" Shinn roared. "I understand that you're a goddamned monster!"

The Justice lunged back up behind the Freedom, claws snapping towards the white mobile suit's arms; Kira darted away and knocked the Justice back with a hard kick to the head, then whirled around again to block a sword stroke from the Zulfiqar.

"You were better than this, Kira!" Athrun shouted. "We stood together to _protect_ the world, not destroy it!"

"_Shut up!_" Kira screamed back. "That life is over! I'm not that person anymore, and I won't go back!"

Shinn's eyes flashed with fury. "Perfect," he said, "there's no little kernel of goodness left in you." The Zulfiqar charged forward. "So I won't have to worry when I _kill you!_"

—

Beams flew in all directions as one of the _Fortuna_'s VaROZ units and a team of ZAKUs showered the Marduk Gundam with firepower, only to watch it all go sailing off course thanks to the Geschmeidig Panzer. Inside the cockpit, Auel rolled his eyes.

"You guys gotta be more creative than _that,_" he laughed. "Sting! Go for it!"

Abruptly, the Fujin Gundam rocketed out from safety behind the Marduk and fired its gunbarrels into the sky. They darted out of formation and lanced down towards the ZAFT mobile suits. The ZAKUs broke formation, but not before beam bolts claimed two of them, and the rest backed away as the Fujin itself gave chase with a volley of beam shots. The VaROZ lunged up into its path with a vicious beam claw-assisted kick that sent Sting scrambling for distance, and the ZAKUs seized the opportunity to fire again.

The Marduk whirled down into the fight and showered the ZAFT machines with a storm of beam gun blasts, driving them all back. Auel pulled back himself to continue raining fire on the enemy, as Sting pushed forward with a blaze of fire from the gunbarrels.

Suddenly, the VaROZ darted back into the Fujin's path with a beam saber in hand and brought it down against the Gundam's beam shield. Sting blinked in surprise as a brown-haired girl in a red ZAFT flight suit appeared on the auxiliary screen.

"This far," she snarled, "and no further!"

Sting frowned. "And just who the hell are you?"

The VaROZ flung the Fujin back with a wordless shout from its pilot and charged.

—

Viveka grunted in frustration as yet another blast of plasma missed its mark and the silver VaROZ below gracefully darted out of harm's way. A team of ZAKUs below picked up the slack with a volley of firepower that sent the Aurora Gundam scrambling out of the way—just before the gray Judgment Gundam blasted into the fight with a devastating fusillade of its own from its various DRAGOONs.

"Not so tough when you're up against a better machine, huh," Viveka growled, and the Aurora charged again with another wave of fire. The VaROZ danced around the blasts and stormed back forward, beam saber in hand; the two mobile suits crashed together amid a shower of sparks.

"And while you deal with him," Rau said, as the Judgment rocketed past, "I will dispose of his friends."

Viveka ground her teeth. Maybe that was why Athrun hated his guts.

The VaROZ, not to be forgotten, flung the Aurora back with its saber and turned to pursue—but Viveka somersaulted into its path and slammed it back with a quick saber swipe.

"Not so fast, buddy," she said with a grin, "you have to get past me first."

—

A bone-rattling crash went rippling through the Kali Gundam as the white DOM Trooper up above brought its massive leg down onto the black Gundam's chest. Stella grunted in frustration as the Kali reeled under the blow; she jammed the controls back and the Kali pitched downward as the DOM and its comrades followed up with a storm of bazooka shells and beam blasts.

Stella threw the Kali forward and lanced up behind the first DOM, and with a quick backhanded saber blow, sliced it in two. She whipped around to shower the remaining six DOM Troopers with beam fire.

"One," she hissed, and backed away as the rest opened fire. They spread out their formation to flank her; the Kali ducked between their blasts and kept its distance as Stella searched for an opening. One of the DOMs moved forward, bazooka blazing; Stella threw herself beneath its shots and lanced forward, and before it could react, she drilled a beam rifle blast through its cockpit.

"Two—" Stella started—but an instant later, the Kali lurched back and flung up its beam saber as a third DOM Trooper came down with a crash and a hard overhead saber swing of its own. Stella frowned as the Kali groaned under the DOM's superior strength—superior strength, perhaps, but not speed.

With a sudden crash, the Kali lunged forward, rammed the DOM with its shoulder, and then swept its saber through the white mobile suit's waist. Stella darted aside.

"Three," she muttered, and looked back up as the four surviving machines circled her like sharks.

—

Trojan clenched his fists around the Green Frame Kai's controls as the VaROZ in front of him pressed its saber against the blades on the Green Frame's custom rifle. He surged forward to throw the silver mobile suit back, but it lashed at him with a swift kick aided by the beam claw, and Trojan ducked backward to avoid the blow—just as the VaROZ rocketed to safety and showered the Green Frame with beam fire.

An instant later, a web of blasts lit up around the silver mobile suit, driving it back towards the team of ZAKUs approaching from behind. The Twilight Cortana dropped into the fight with two pulsing blasts from its long-range cannons, and Lily cackled with delight.

"I dunno why the others had problems with this bunch of losers!" she laughed. Trojan frowned and boosted ahead, where the VaROZ was already lining up for a blast at the Cortana. Lily ducked aside and the DRAGOONs flashed back to life; Trojan spun his way through their fire and pounded the VaROZ's beam shield with his sabers. The silver mobile suit whirled around again, beam saber in hand, and the two machines clashed in a shower of sparks.

"This one's still pretty good," he grunted. "Lily, get around him!"

The Cortana slid around the VaROZ, beam rifle leveled, but the ZAKUs charged forward with a wall of firepower to force the mobile suits apart. The VaROZ took its chance to fling the Green Frame back. Trojan yelped in surprise as it closed in and fired a shimmering blast from its torso-mounted cannon; he hurled the Green Frame aside and fired back with the beam rifle, but the VaROZ elegantly ducked around his blasts and went back on the attack.

"What the hell!" Lily shouted. "Nobody invited _you_ guys! Back off!" The Cortana's DRAGOONs blazed again and drove the ZAKUs back under a hail of beams. "Bunch of cheaters!"

—

This was not how Emily had wanted to get out of the brig.

She steeled herself for pain as the Gundam Eclipse circled around the darting DRAGOONs of the Providence ZAKU. They spun a net of beam fire around her; she ducked through the blasts and charged through an opening, and with a crash, she lashed out with the Dragon's Tail. The Providence ZAKU ducked away and fired back with its beam rifle; Emily dodged its shots with practiced ease and swept down, beam sword in hand, and the green blade slammed against the Providence ZAKU's left-hand shoulder shield.

Emily focused herself on the presence. This time there was something else, under the layers of military coldness. That little seed of doubt brought a wave of hope to her and she smiled as she thought back to what she'd told her father. Vindication felt as sweet as ever.

The Providence ZAKU's DRAGOONs swarmed again, but Emily darted through them and then swept the Dragon's Tail through the gray mobile suit's beam rifle. The Providence ZAKU abandoned its ruined weapon and drew a beam saber instead, monoeye blazing furiously. The ZAKU backed away as the DRAGOONs held the Eclipse at bay; Emily tensed as she saw the gray mobile suit rocket upwards and then streak back down towards her, and with a crash, she fired the booster, roared up into her opponent's face, and deflected its blow with her sword.

"So," sneered Unit Zero-Two, "I see you've finally decided to stop messing around."

"Yeah," Emily agreed, "and I'm still going to save you."

Zero-Two's eye twitched. "We'll see."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"The modified Parsifals are ready to fire," Chen reported at the weapons station. Meyrin sank back into the captain's chair as the _Minerva_ rattled amid an endless barrage of missiles. All well and good, because sooner or later they'd have to give the CIWS a rest.

"_Eternal_-class closing off the starboard stern," Burt added. "It's launching missiles!"

The CIWS emplacements automatically came back to life and picked them out of the sky—and through the smoke, Meyrin saw her opportunity.

"Parsifals, _fire!_"

With a blast of exhaust, the _Minerva_'s Parsifal air-to-surface missiles took of and lanced around towards their first target, the red _Eternal_-class. The cruiser's CIWIS guns came to life and blasted the missiles out of the sky, and the smoke billowed up around the ship—and Meyrin narrowed her eyes as the red _Eternal_ tried to fire its main guns and came up against nothing but a cloud of anti-beam smoke.

"Isolde, Neidhardt, _fire!_"

The Isolde boomed and the Neidhardt space missiles took off and slammed head-on into the enemy cruiser as it veered out of the smoke. The ship lurched under the blows as it cleared the anti-beam particles—

"Tristans, target the engine block! _Fire!_"

And then the _Minerva_'s Tristan cannons opened up, and with a flash of fire, the red _Eternal_-class cruiser was no more. Meyrin glanced over at the other two _Eternal_ ships and the _Fortuna_ as they circled around. Originally they had been waiting for their comrade to clear their line of fire, but now they would be pissed—and that was what she was counting on.

Up above, the _Fortuna_ opened fire with a withering Tristan blast of its own, and Malik yanked the ship to port, ducking down through the ruins of the red _Eternal_ cruiser. Meyrin eyed her three remaining foes carefully. _One down, and as for the others..._

"Malik," she said, "take us closer to the colony. There should be something around here we can use..."

—

The VaROZ and Fujin Gundam rattled as beam sabers met, sparks flew, and Sting Oakley wondered just who the hell this kid was and why she was getting so worked up. Maybe her conscience was kicking in. Who knew.

The Fujin slammed the VaROZ back with a knee to the chest. Sting leveled off his beam rifle and fired, slamming blasts against the VaROZ's beam shield and driving it back.

"Making this more difficult than it has to be!" she snapped.

Sting smirked back. "Well I _am_ in the Resistance. Resisting is kind of our thing."

Firing its thrusters, the VaROZ backed away under a hail of beam fire from the Fujin's DRAGOONs. It whipped around, beam saber in hand, and rocketed back towards its team of ZAKUs—a team that, Sting noticed, had been reduced by about five. The seven survivors were backing away as the Marduk Gundam pummeled them with firepower.

"Auel, heads up!" Sting shouted. Auel turned around and the Marduk's beam naginata flashed to life, just in time to deflect a saber strike from the VaROZ. The silver mobile suit darted away again before Auel could return the attack and took up formation with the surviving ZAKUs.

"Kind of a pain in the ass today, aren't they?" Auel grunted, as the Marduk turned back towards its foes. "Sting, cover me, I'll use the Callidus cannons!"

The ZAFT machines charged forward with a wave of beam fire. Sting lunged up in front of the Marduk and fired back with the gunbarrels, boxing them in and forcing their formation close together. The VaROZ pitched forward and rammed the Fujin hard with its knee, driving the green Gundam back; the ZAKUs took the opportunity to spread out—

"Not so fast!" Auel screamed, and with a mighty blast, the Marduk fired its two Callidus Mk II cannons—and three of the ZAKUs disappeared in a flash.

The girl in the VaROZ snarled a curse. "The last time we fought, you were _helpless!_"

"I know," Sting shot back, "but times change!"

—

With a hard crash that jarred her bones, Viveka slammed the Aurora Gundam's left shoulder into the VaROZ's chest. The silver mobile suit staggered back, but managed to whip up its saber just in time to block the Aurora's downward hack. Viveka hissed out a frustrated sigh.

She risked a glance around the battlefield. Down below, the ZAKUs were scrambling for safety as the Judgment Gundam's DRAGOONs pelted them with beam fire. She snapped her attention back to the VaROZ as it surged forward and threw her back, then fired a blazing shot from its torso cannon; she threw the Aurora aside and returned the fire in spades with her plasma cannons. The VaROZ took the blasts to its beam shield; an instant later, the Aurora was there with another beam saber hack, and the two mobile suits descended back into a saber fight.

Below, Rau boxed in the ZAKUs with a round of DRAGOON fire, then flung the Judgment up to let loose a torrent of blasts from the mounted beam guns. Two of the ZAKUs vanished in plumes of fire, and the remaining six darted apart through openings in the barrage. One of them moved forward, the beam Gatlings on its Slash Wizard pack blazing—only for Rau to back away from its furious horizontal axe slash and blow it away with the chest-mounted Callidus.

The five surviving ZAKUs backed away and struggled back into formation. Rau spared a glance up at the Aurora, still fencing with the VaROZ, and charged back into battle.

—

One of the Gunner ZAKU Warriors lined up behind the Twilight Cortana for a desperate blast at its back; the Cortana whipped around and Lily laughed triumphantly as she speared it through the cockpit on a beam rifle shot, then whirled around again to swarm the four DRAGOONs around the other ZAKUs.

"Man, I didn't know how cool this was!" she giggled. The Cortana darted aside amid a cloud of afterimages as the ZAKUs returned fire, then charged forward with another DRAGOON blast to drive the ZAKUs further away. They broke formation and tried to split up, showering her from both flanks with beam fire; the Cortana snapped to the left and lanced up towards the three ZAKUs there. They scattered, but the one in the middle was too slow and the Cortana put a beam rifle blast through its chest. Lily whipped around to fire back at the rest, then darted away again to let their return fire catch nothing but afterimages.

The ZAKUs kept coming regardless, pounding the Cortana's beam shields with a wall of firepower. Lily ducked down below them and then lunged up towards their ranks, but they split up again and began to pull back, beam rifles blazing.

Lily glanced over their shoulders and frowned at the sight of the decrepit space colony behind them. "Oh, you wanna play _that_ way? Then we'll play _that_ way!"

—

Four DOM Troopers blazed along the surface of the Mendel colony in pursuit of the sleek black Kali Gundam. Stella glanced over her shoulder at the four pursuers—then abruptly slammed on the brakes, whipped around, and slammed one of the Kali's foot-mounted claws directly into the first DOM's chest. She yanked it out as the mobile suit lurched and shot it through the chest with her rifle, then backed away as it exploded.

"Four," she said, and took off again as the three DOMs behind her opened fire again.

Up ahead, the colony's broken mirrors glimmered in the sun. Stella steered the Kali through one of the holes, then immediately darted to the side, just as the three DOMs plowed through in a glittering rain of shattered glass. She moved in behind them and opened fire, but they whipped around with their beam shields active and fired bazooka rounds up into the glass. Stella squinted as the sunlight reflected in all directions; up ahead, one of the DOMs charged forward, beam saber in hand—

Stella lunged forward and then ducked to the right, beam saber flashing to life in the Kali's left hand. She swung it out before the DOM could react and let it slice itself in two at the waist as it shot by.

And as it exploded, the Kali got back to its feet with an icy glare towards the two surviving DOMs.

"Five," said Stella.

—

Sparks danced across the Zulfiqar's armor as Shinn Asuka slammed his sword down onto the Vega Freedom's beam saber. The white Gundam backed away under the force of the blow, then rocketed upward to avoid the next swing. The blue DRAGOON pods slammed back into their racks on the Freedom's wings—

A moment later, the Celestial Justice was there with its claws wide open to slam down onto the Freedom's arms and yank them apart, leaving the mobile suit's torso wide open.

"Shinn, now!" Athrun cried.

"_Say goodbye!_" screamed Shinn, and the Zulfiqar closed in with its sword raised high—

Kira's eye flashed with fury as he fired the Freedom's thrusters into the Justice's face and knocked the mobile suit back. With a shout, he fired forward a full burst that sent the Zulfiqar careening off course, then whipped around for another burst into the Justice's beam shield to send it staggering away. He rocketed after the reeling Justice; Athrun answered with a beam claw-assisted kick to the Freedom's beam shield that knocked it off balance, just in time for Shinn to return to the fight with a scream and a heavy downward sword blow to the Freedom's saber.

"Even if you kill me, our plans will still go forward," Kira warned.

"Oh, shut your fucking mouth!" Shinn snapped.

The Freedom roared upwards with a sudden burst from its thrusters and then went spiraling back down towards Mendel's pitted, battle-scarred surface. Shinn and Athrun followed with a barrage of beam fire from the latter and forced the Freedom to once again launch its DRAGOONs and cast a pulsing net of beam blasts to stop the two Gundams in their tracks. Kira followed it up with a full burst that drove the two machines apart; the Justice stayed back and answered with a volley of its own, while the Zulfiqar moved forward, sword in hand.

—

"It should be abundantly clear to you by now that _I am not your mother!_" screamed Unit Zero-Two as the Providence ZAKU and Gundam Eclipse clashed. "So why you persist in spouting this nonsense is simply beyond me!"

Emily clenched her teeth as she parried another saber blow from the Providence ZAKU, and then dodged another wave of beam fire from the DRAGOONs. She ducked through an opening and slammed her beam sword hard against the Providence ZAKU's saber, sending it staggering back.

"I _know_ you're not my mother," she shot back, "but there's still something in you worth saving!" The Eclipse surged forward with a flurry of afterimages and sword strikes. "If you're her clone, then you _know_ this isn't what you were meant to be! You _saw_ what else you could be! I showed you! Remember?"

The Providence ZAKU stabbed forward with its saber and stopped the Eclipse's sword cold. "That's nonsense," Zero-Two snapped. "I was bred and modified purely for battle. I have no other skills. No other purpose. That life you showed me would have been fine, but it's not open to me." She narrowed her eyes. "And it's the same for you, if only you'd admit it. We _are_ alike—because we were both bred for battle. And you know as well as I do that when this war's over, whichever one of us is still alive won't be going back to a normal life no matter what else happens. Neither of us will be anything more than this."

Emily frowned. "You haven't tried."

"And I'm sure you'll tell me that I can be just like her if I wanted to?"

The Eclipse roared forward, thrusters blazing. "I know there's someone else lurking inside you! I can feel it! And I'm going to pull you out! There's more to you than just being someone's soldier!"

Zero-Two glowered back as the swordfight resumed.

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

"_Saint Josephine_ is coming around on the other side of the colony," the sensor officer reported. Lyle fixed his eyes on the _Minerva_ as it ponderously dodged yet another salvo from the _Absolution_. It swung around, guns angling up towards the _Fortuna_—

"Descend, forty degrees!" he barked. The _Fortuna_ obligingly dipped down below the _Minerva_'s four shimmering blasts from its Tristan cannons. Lyle leaned forward. "Tristans, return fire! Target the engine block!" The _Fortuna_'s own guns opened fire—but the _Minerva_ promptly veered to port and escaped harm.

"Slippery bastards," muttered Morales, the XO.

"Not for long," Lyle growled. "Keep firing at their tail. Drive them forward—"

"Sir! The _Saint Josephine_ just stopped!" the sensor officer exclaimed.

Lyle blinked in surprise. "What—stopped? What the hell are they—"

"_Fortuna_," another voice exclaimed, and Lyle looked up in shock towards the auxiliary screen and the frantic face of one of the _Saint Josephine_'s bridge operators. "We're caught in a bunch of metapolymer strings from the colony! We're dead in space!"

"What—what the hell do you mean?" Lyle cried. "The _Minerva_ is practically right on top of you!" He looked back towards the main screen. "Weapons, target the _Minerva_ immediately! Stop them! Before they—"

The auxiliary screen went dark as the operator screamed, and Lyle looked back—to find the _Minerva_ pouring the full fire of its Tannhäuser cannon into a spot just obscured from the _Fortuna_'s view. Something exploded, and in a blinding flash of fire, the Mendel colony began to break apart. Lyle watched in disbelief in the _Fortuna_'s captain's chair as the wreckage of the _Saint Josephine_ drifted out as Mendel broke up.

"That...that's impossible," he murmured. "How did they know...?"

Morales stared ahead darkly. "They've been running around here for three years," he said. "They know all the nooks and crannies."

"_Minerva_ is coming around again, sir," the sensor officer added.

Lyle leaned forward. "Back into battle! We'll engage them in open space! Move, people!"

—

Stella Loussier blinked in surprise as Mendel colony bucked beneath her and began to break apart. _That_ certainly hadn't been part of the plan.

She dredged up the memories of her skirmishes in the Debris Belt and that long-ago battle in the Gaia amid the falling ruins of Junius 7. The two DOMs in front of her swerved to avoid a chunk of the colony wall plunging past them; Stella seized her chance, ducked around the wreckage, launched herself forward, and stabbed the first DOM through the cockpit with her beam saber. She darted aside as it exploded and eyed the last remaining DOM Trooper as it circled her.

"Six," she said—and the DOM charged towards her and opened fire.

Abruptly, it swung around and fired its bazooka into an oncoming piece of debris, blowing it apart—but that was all the time Stella needed to rush in on the attack. The DOM turned again, but too late as the Kali Gundam's beam saber went slicing down through the Gigalauncher. The white mobile suit abandoned its useless weapon in favor of its beam saber and slammed the blade down against the Kali's saber, leaving the two mobile suits pressing against each other as sparks and wreckage flew around them.

Another piece of wreckage came sailing through, and this one clipped the DOM's shoulder, sending it careening away from the Kali. Stella let instinct take over as she guided the black Gundam through the wreckage and landed on one particular chunk of what had once been the colony wall. Down below, the DOM floundered and struggled to regain its balance; Stella lunged off her hiding place and dropped down behind the white mobile suit; it whipped around, beam saber ready—

...and instead, the Kali Gundam jammed its saber through the DOM Trooper's cockpit.

Stella kicked the mobile suit away, watched it explode, and sat back with a sigh.

"Seven."

—

The VaROZ staggered back as Trojan Noiret's Green Frame Kai delivered a punishing kick to the face. It whipped around with a kick of its own, assisted by the beam claw on its foot; the Green Frame merely tilted back and let the leg fly by. Trojan smirked and rushed forward, and with a heavy crash, he slammed the Green Frame's knee into the VaROZ's chest and sent it stumbling back even further.

"And now—!" he said, and raised the Green Frame's custom rifle—

Suddenly the VaROZ fired a blast from its torso cannon that nearly wiped out the Green Frame's arm. Trojan yelped in surprise and leapt back—just as the VaROZ whipped up its beam rifle to shower him with fire. He backed away behind his beam shield, and the VaROZ seized its opportunity to pull back, rifle still blazing.

"Giving up, are you?" he muttered. "That's hardly any fun..."

—

Auel Neider grinned as the last three ZAKUs backed away from him in what sure looked to him like sheer terror. Always good to remind one's enemies who's boss.

He lined up the guns and fired again, pounding the ZAKUs below with another storm of beam fire. One of them darted to the side and leveled off the cannon on its Gunner Wizard pack; Auel merely backed up and activated the Geschmeidig Panzer, sending the blast flying off into space.

The other two charged next, one of them wielding a beam axe. It brought the blade down with a crash onto the Marduk's naginata, sparks flying; the second ZAKU sidled in from behind, beam rifle pointed squarely at the Marduk's back.

"You think that'll work?" Auel laughed—and then he whipped around, throwing back the first ZAKU and sending his naginata cleaving through the second at the waist. And as it exploded, he whirled around again and blew away the first ZAKU with a point-blank salvo from the Marduk's beam guns.

The Gunner ZAKU below backed away behind a stream of fire from its cannon, but Auel angled the shoulder shells to deflect the fire back at its source. The ZAKU dove aside to avoid its own shots—and then Auel charged forward with a grin and chopped it in two with the naginata.

The ZAKU exploded and Auel sat back. "Another satisfied customer," he sighed, and scanned the black skies for a sign of the Fujin. Up above, the green Gundam clashed with that silver VaROZ mobile suit, and Auel heaved a melodramatic second sigh and took off after them.

—

Viveka yelped in surprise as a chunk of Mendel colony drifted by her, obscuring her line of sight towards the VaROZ and its shimmering beam saber. The silver mobile suit wove its way through the debris and charged down towards her; she swung up her own saber to parry its blow and then slammed it back with a hard kick to the chest. It ducked aside behind another piece of debris as she followed up with a plasma cannon volley.

"Okay, that's just getting annoying," she growled.

The VaROZ rocketed out of hiding with another salvo and the Aurora dove down beneath it, sliding its way through the flying debris. The VaROZ turned its fire on the charging Aurora, but too late, as the red mobile suit darted up through the wreckage and charged up towards the VaROZ. The silver mobile suit jammed its beam saber up to deflect the Aurora's blow.

Viveka glanced to the right, then abruptly kicked off from the VaROZ's chest, and backed away—just as a piece of debris smacked into the VaROZ and carried it off.

She frowned as she watched it go. "The hell? That was just getting interesting!" The Aurora transformed to its mobile armor mode and took off in pursuit.

—

The Gundam Eclipse rattled as the beam sword landed against the Providence ZAKU's shoulder shield and sent the gray mobile suit staggering back into the debris. Emily charged after it, through the fire from the DRAGOONs—and a moment later, several of those units went silent as they crashed into pieces of wreckage from the colony.

"This conversation is meaningless," Zero-Two snapped. "You can think I'm whoever you want, but that doesn't change my mission." The Providence ZAKU pitched forward suddenly with a furious beam saber stab. Emily slammed on the brakes and parried the blow with her beam sword—but the DRAGOONs flashed to life around her and drove her back with a whirlwind of beam bolts.

"I felt how you responded to me last time," Emily shot back, "and I can feel the doubt in you this time!"

The Providence ZAKU surged forward again and the swordfight began anew. "Imagine what you like."

"I'm not imagining anything," Emily said—and with a burst of light, the Voiture Lumiere flashed to life.

"Not again!" Zero-Two started, and then the Providence ZAKU lurched as the Eclipse ripped off its left arm with the Dragon's Tail. The DRAGOONs moved in, spewing beam shots, but the Eclipse effortlessly blazed by them and slashed off the Providence ZAKU's right arm at the elbow. It whirled around again—but the Eclipse was behind it, and Zero-Two yelped in surprise as the beam sword slashed through the mobile suit's backpack. A thunderous explosion threw the mobile suits apart and Emily moved in closer to finish her foe off—

...and instead, the charred and headless Providence ZAKU's DRAGOONs gave one last burst of fire, slamming into the debris around the Eclipse and lighting up a firestorm. Emily squeezed her eyes shut and jammed back on the controls—and through the flashing lights she could see what was left of the Providence ZAKU, slipping away.

—

Kira Yamato cringed as he dodged both the Celestial Justice Gundam's relentless beam fire and the wreckage of the crumbling Mendel colony. At least this place was destroyed now. One less tie to his past to worry about.

He looked back up and ducked aside from a sweeping overhead blow from the Zulfiqar Gundam, then whipped around to swing at its exposed back. It turned in the blink of an eye to deflect his attack and then went back on the offensive. Kira threw the Vega Freedom to the side again as the Justice opened fire and barely dodged another beam volley.

"Marshal," Lyle's voice spoke up, "we have another heat signature inbound. It looks—"

The battlefield stopped for a moment as a blazing column of light lanced out of the blackness—and Kira grimaced as it plowed straight through the _Absolution_ and wiped it out amid a cloud of fire. He glanced back towards the source and felt his stomach lurch as the vast black hull of the _Charlemagne_ cruised into battle.

"Nowhere to run now," snarled Shinn Asuka. Kira's eye flicked between his foes, the new enemy, and his flagship, and the bitter taste of defeat welled up in his throat.

The Zulfiqar charged again—but this time the Vega Freedom somersaulted over its head, dropped a combat flare between its enemies, and rocketed away towards the _Fortuna_.

Kira held back the urge to pound his fist on the Gundam's console—and the urge to go back to those two roiling points of anger behind him and continue the fight. "Recall our mobile suits to the _Fortuna_ and retreat at flank speed," he said. "We'll...just have to destroy the _Minerva_ later."

A devastated Lyle could only nod and the screen went dark. Kira spared one more look over his shoulder, where the two Gundams were staggering away from his burning flare.

_My fight's not important. Not anymore._

—

**July 1st, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_**, Debris Belt**

Lord Djibril sat back with a sigh in the command chair on the _Ahura Mazda_'s bridge as Crayt Markav took her leave. Arms crossed over his chest, Admiral Stone watched her leave with a disdainful scowl.

"Sir, may I ask why you chose _her_ to be the Phantom Pain's Field Marshal?" Stone asked once the door had closed.

Djibril waved his hand airily. "Little choice at the time, and the religious zeal with which she set herself to the task of eradicating the Resistance was useful." He shrugged. "She is technically a Newtype or whatever, and she brought the Vishnu with her. It's not as though she'll be of no use."

"I suppose," Stone said, "but that..._faith_ of hers..."

"I know," Djibril agreed, "but as I said, she has her uses." He looked ahead, past Stone, wistfully out the bridge windows. "In the meantime, the most important thing is to make sure we can retake Daedalus. And to do that, we have to survive."

Stone nodded. "But sir, we do need a safe haven. The Debris Belt can't protect us forever. We perhaps could have used Mendel, but..."

"Yes, not an option anymore. We'll have to see whose side Garcia is on over at Artemis." Djibril scowled. "But in the meantime, we have to remain here, to gather as many allies as possible. Meyers hasn't found us yet."

"And if he does..."

They both trailed off as, outside, one of the massive Destroys drifted by.

Djibril smiled. "Precisely."

—

A _Girty Lue_-class battleship was well appointed with corridors that offered a sweeping view outside the ship. Unfortunately, all one could see around the _Ahura Mazda_ were other warships and lots of space junk, but it was sort of striking nonetheless—if only to see with one's own eyes just how much trash the human race could produce.

Mudie Holcroft leaned against the wall opposite the windows and stared off into space. Shams was by her side, a bandage wrapped around his head from a hard hit he'd taken in the Vanguard during their escape from Daedalus Crater. At least he'd been okay; she'd fought like a tiger to get him out of there and she still wasn't sure why.

Shams heaved a sigh. "Life on the lam's tougher than I thought." He waved a hand towards the Debris Belt. "Now we're no better than our old pals in the Resistance."

They both fell silent at that uncomfortable thought. "Did we make the wrong choice...?"

"I dunno," Shams said, "do you think we did?"

Mudie stared disconsolately at the floor. "I...don't know anymore." She paused and searched for words. "I don't know what side we're supposed to be on."

"Oh, who gives a fuck what _side_ we're on," Shams grumbled. "Just...being here. You think it was the right choice?" She looked up at him questioningly. "I mean, if we'd surrendered to the right unit, like the _Minerva_ or something, they probably wouldn't be treating us too badly. And it would be better than..." He looked at the Debris Belt again, at the collection of Lord Djibril's last loyalists and the pathetic scraps of a once-mighty empire. "_This_."

"So, what, we should've defected?"

"Or...I dunno, surrendered, or gone AWOL, or whatever."

Mudie frowned. "Would you have really gone off and jumped ship or whatever?"

"Well..." He shifted awkwardly. "Not without you."

"Not without me?"

"I...wouldn't have left you behind like that." He shrugged again. "Neither of us would be happy like that."

Mudie looked back at him again, feeling the blush rising on her face. She'd fought like hell to get him to safety at Daedalus—and now she knew why.

—

Sven Cal Bayan clenched his fists around the gantry railing in the _Ahura Mazda_'s noisy, cramped hangar. Even here, with mechanics screaming and heavy machinery in near-constant motion, he could still hear that damned little child.

_In the last couple wars, in the end, both sides wanted to destroy the world,_ the child reminded him. _And if it weren't for some people, they would have! And you would have well and truly _never_ had a chance to go see the stars again! Is that really what you want this time?_

Sven gritted his teeth. The child could not be silenced of late. Especially not after their stay at Althea Crater, where the boy had taken on a new tactic and delighted in comparing him to the husks of humanity strewn about what had until recently been the Earth Alliance's most sinister fortress.

_It makes no difference now,_ he shot back. _I will never have that chance anyway. No one will give me refuge if I leave. No one will let me live. I am trapped in this fate forever._

_That's not what Danilov thought,_ the kid replied. _I mean, obviously, or else we'd still be having our little conversations on his ship and not this one._

_Danilov was a fool. Djibril will not allow him to survive._ Even as those words crossed his mind, he knew how ridiculous they sounded. Lord Djibril had a lot more pressing things to worry about these days than Ivan Danilov.

_Well, if that's the case, then you're probably gonna die here,_ the kid said with what sounded like the verbal equivalent of a shrug, _and it won't matter anyway. So at least if you left, you'd have a chance._

_I would not._

_You don't know that_.

Sven gripped the railing until his knuckles were white. _You are still a child,_ he snarled, _and you do not understand how the world really works._

The child merely laughed. _'cuz you've got it all figured out, I see._

—

To be continued...


	44. Phase 44: Eyes Toward the Future

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 44 - Eyes Toward the Future

—

**July 2nd, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

She was out of the brig. At least there was that.

It was of little comfort to Emily von Oldendorf as she rode the admittedly nifty little moving floors around the Althea Crater base. The Resistance had quite eagerly set up shop here and turned it into a _de facto_ staging area for what the rumors indicated was a final push to destroy Lord Djibril and the Phantom Pain fleet. Rumor had it that Djibril was hiding with his loyalists somewhere in the Debris Belt, perhaps near the often-overlooked colonies and shoal zones of Lagrange Point 1. Certainly it was a decent place to hide.

In the meantime, the Resistance had essentially claimed Althea Crater for its own, after eagerly looting everything of value from the base. But it wasn't all fun and games, because there were also the Extended labs that most of the fighters refused to even venture near. The ones who had gone down there had for the most part come out shell-shocked—not from the fighting, but from what they'd found.

That dark cloud of horror was sufficient to keep Emily confined to the base's upper levels, where loading bays, hangars, and assorted military infrastructure usually kept her attention nice and distracted from the evils down below.

And then there was Viveka. She leaned against the moving rail with a tired sigh.

"So those Extended are doing okay, I hear," she said quietly. "Well...to an extent. They're pretty fucked up."

Emily glanced out one of the windows to the left, and out over the surreal landscape of Earth's tireless satellite. "That's good."

"Yeah," she said. "But, well, they're all kids, and none of them have any parents, so..." She trailed off. "Lots of orphans, basically." Emily cringed at the distinct feeling of discomfort rising from her sister. "Like...us."

Emily frowned. "Are you mad at me for killing Father?"

"Oh no, he was an asshole. Good riddance. But, well, it got me thinking. We don't have our parents anymore. And there's a whole lot of kids here who are in the same boat..."

"You're not thinking of adopting one of these Extended or something, are you?"

Viveka blinked. "How the hell did you guess that?" She shook her head. "Well, uh, yes. Yes I am. You got a problem with that?"

"N-No, it's just..." Emily trailed off for a moment, searching for words. "I don't know. Wouldn't it be even worse than trying to raise a normal kid?"

"Probably. But someone will have to."

"And does Athrun know about this?"

Viveka shook her head. "I'll have to have a nice long talk with him about it, and I know how much he loves those. But it's just an idea I've been kicking around, for..." She waved her mechanical hand. "After the war, I guess. Looks like we're getting close to the end. So I guess it's time to start thinking about that sort of thing." She paused—as they passed the makeshift graves outside of a handful of Resistance soldiers who had not been so lucky. "If...we survive."

Emily watched as the impromptu cross vanished into the distance. Her father was gone, her mother was gone, and the only tie she had left to the latter was locked inside an uncooperative human weapon.

After the war. She would have to get there first.

—

"You know," Meyrin said quietly, even though she, Athrun, and Shinn were safely inside the confines of the _Minerva_'s captain's office, "I'm almost of a mind to let him get away with _that_ one."

Athrun and Shinn glanced at each other. Killing Rondo Mina Sahaku probably _was_ at least on the lower end of the list of evil things Rau Le Creuset had ever done.

"I still don't quite believe all this," Meyrin continued, "but between killing Mina and your testimony, I guess I don't have a choice. But if you're so concerned about what he's doing with Emily..."

"Not just her," Shinn spoke up. "But whatever else he might be up to. Whatever else in this war he might be influencing."

Meyrin looked questioningly at Athrun. "Probably not much," the blue-haired Coordinator said. "He's been here and we would've known long ago if he had been trying to influence world events or whatever from his bunk on the ship. But Rau is willing to be flexible, so..."

"So let me get this straight," Meyrin said. "He's the defective clone of a rich but unethical man who was seeking immortality. Since his body is deteriorating due to the cloning, he's angry at the world and wants to destroy it. He's manipulated both sides of the past three wars somehow in an effort to literally destroy the world." She turned towards Athrun, skepticism still clear in her eyes. "He handed the N-Jammer Canceller blueprints to Blue Cosmos so they could use nuclear weapons on the PLANTs. He engineered Gilbert Dullindal's rise to the Chairmanship and helped Lord Djibril take over Blue Cosmos. He helped set up the Junius 7 drop. And he quietly ran around the world setting up the pieces so everyone would slaughter each other at the end of the Junius War. Is that about it?"

Athrun shrugged. "Pretty much."

"Then what does this have to do with what Emily did?"

Shinn frowned. "She insisted she had to go face her father. She killed him. Rau provided her the information to get her here. And..." He trailed off, fearful of raising this possibility, but Athrun and Meyrin's inquisitive looks spurred him on. "I've got this theory. Whenever something really bad happens to her, like when her friend in the ZAFT remnant was killed during Argus's attack, she flips out and turns into a vicious force of nature. And now she's worrying about that clone of her mother, and they had a pretty good relationship, or at least she said they did. And I'm sure you've noticed that she hasn't really been herself ever since she got back from Mendel. So...I have this feeling that Rau sent her to go kill her father, so that he'd get her all stirred up, and from there he's setting her up for a fall with this clone. Because it's not going to work out. And when it fails, well..." He fell silent again. The thought spoke for itself.

Meyrin sat back. "Then, if he's so terrible and the consequences are so dire...what do we do?"

At that, Athrun leaned forward. "Well, whatever else, he'll need to be eliminated," he said. A bolt of determination flashed across his face. "All that we've said about him is true, but I've got something more personal to settle with him. So leave him to me."

—

Roxy Bannon stood with crossed arms and mounting fury amid the debris of what had once been Althea Crater's commissary. Of course if the Phantom Pain didn't allow their troops to consume alcohol on the base, they weren't going to let them buy it there either. Sting and Auel had tried in vain to explain that, but Roxy had insisted that some officer somewhere had broken the rules. Whether or not that was true, however, was a moot point—because now everything had been looted and the shelves were bare.

Roxy scowled. "Remind me to kick Emily's ass for making us go out and get her before I could raid the stores."

Sting and Auel both exchanged a look. "Did you really come here just to steal some booze?" Sting asked. "I mean, they still have lots of other crap left over."

"They're Phantom Pain officers, of course they're gonna have a sweet booze supply," Roxy said, and let out an airy sigh of defeat. "But of course. It's all gone by the time we get back."

"Well, it was probably all crap anyways," Auel said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Everyone knows Baileys is the best."

"You lightweight."

"Oh, shut up."

Sting cringed as another argument started up. After all this time Auel still couldn't really hold his liquor, and Roxy would never let him forget that fact.

He glanced around the debris as the Extended and the operator girl with the superhuman liver traded barbs. The Alliance had left this place in such a hurry, they hadn't even had time to kill off their Extended subjects, like they'd done at Lodonia. It was almost a shame, really, since for some of those kids death was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.

But he forced those thoughts out of his mind, because it wasn't right. This way, they had a chance—and he would make sure they kept it.

He looked around again, imagining the labs far below. Horrible or not, at least now he knew his destiny—and he knew Captain Lee would be proud.

—

It was all poor Lily Thevalley could do to keep up with the rapid movements as Stella Loussier cleaned the filter on her fish's aquarium with the speed and precision of a recruit at boot camp reassembling his rifle under the drill instructor's pitiless gaze. Nearby, Kazahana Aja was equally amazed as Stella snapped the filter back into place and stood back to watch it start back up. Inside, the fish stared quizzically at it for a moment, then stared at Stella for a moment, and then went back to...whatever it was fish did. Lily certainly had no idea.

"All done," Stella said, and dusted off her hands for effect.

"Wow," Kazahana said as she stared down at her watch. "Seventy-three point five seconds."

"Stella has to take care of him," she said quietly, and leaned down to peer at the rather satisfied-looking fish. "It's kind of a lot of work..."

"Yeah, but he's been around longer than most fish usually last," Kazahana offered, and peered inquisitively into the tank. "Especially since he's on a battleship and all."

The fish swam a few laps around the tank, seemingly content, and Stella set to work cleaning up the desk where her fish spent its days. Lily looked between her and Kazahana. The latter had offered her all kinds of information on how to get rid of her Extended implants and modifications, but she still had to decide whether or not to actually do that. Maybe she'd ask Emily. She'd probably know.

Kazahana seemed to know, anyways. Kazahana seemed to know everything, and yet her mother always seemed to hang around in the background with the other guys from Serpent Tail, watching her genius daughter with an amused look on her face.

Thinking about Kazahana's mother inevitably made Lily think about her own mother, or lack thereof. Maybe Emily would know what to do about that, too.

—

The guilt was starting to gnaw at Grey Saiba's heart as he once again looked out the window of his shared cell, across the hallway, where another handful of Phantom Pain captives sat waiting for their fate to happen to them. It was a horrible way to live, and Grey almost would have defected simply to avoid it if he hadn't had other reasons.

Merau didn't appear to care either way, so there was that, but Erin was still a miserable wreck, and when she looked up at him again with tear-streaked eyes, he felt the guilt stab through his heart once more.

"Are you really going to defect?" she asked.

Grey shrugged. "It's better than rotting in here."

She stared blankly at the floor. "I guess."

"So...are you going to come with us?"

Erin blinked away her tears. "I...what about my father?"

"Y'know," Merau spoke up from her corner of the cell, "if we go over, they might offer us amnesty or whatever once they start war crime investigations."

Erin looked unconvinced, so Grey knelt down in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. She looked up in surprise. "Neither of us are going to abandon you here," he said, "but if all we do is sit here, then who knows what will happen to us? At least if we go over, we'll be in control of our own destinies. And..." He shrugged. "I don't want to leave you alone in here."

"You...don't?"

"Of course not."

Erin looked back down at the floor in defeat. "If...you say so."

—

"Being deployed so frequently, I was not privy to much gossip among the officers of the Phantom Pain," explained Ivan Danilov. He stood at the head of a small briefing room with a knot of Resistance leaders in the chairs before him, all of them looking on skeptically. Meyrin Hawke sat in the middle and felt decidedly out of place being briefed by an officer who still wore the black uniform of the Phantom Pain. "What I can say is that the Phantom Pain is probably going to remain loyal to Djibril to the end, with very few exceptions. We were up to our elbows in the worst of Djibril's schemes."

"So we'll be up against the whole of the Phantom Pain," said Aoma Vedlow, somewhere off to Meyrin's left, "as well as whoever else is loyal to Blue Cosmos's cause."

"Essentially," agreed Danilov.

Nobody seemed to find that a comforting thought, so Meyrin decided to speak up. "Without the support of a country, there's little he can do," she said, "so it's just a matter of finding him and finishing him off."

"Of course, the Atlantic Federation thoughtfully disabled the Requiem and destroyed its relay points," added a decidedly annoyed Meriol Pistis, "so we'll still have to do it the hard way."

Meyrin frowned. There was that—and there was still ZAFT out there too. There was no doubt in her mind that they were planning something ghastly to take advantage of all this. The only question was what.

"In any event," Danilov said, "it is my recommendation that we find and destroy Djibril and his fleet as soon as possible, before it can gather anymore strength. Because there are things in the Phantom Pain that could make him very powerful," his face turned grim, "and it is best for the world that he not be allowed to use them."

—

Trojan Noiret blinked in mild disbelief. "Adoption?"

"Yeah," Emily said tiredly, "my sister wants to adopt one of those Extended." She shrugged. "I guess she's right. Someone will have to. It's just...weird, to think of how she might be as a mother."

Trojan leaned against the railing on the moving floor. "You think she'd be bad at it or something?"

"I dunno." She looked forlornly over her shoulder, out the windows, at the Moon's surface. "All I ever really knew about motherhood was what my mother did. And she couldn't really take care of us...y'know, feed us, play with us, make us do our homework. We had maids and nannies for that." She sighed. "Our mother was just...I dunno. Kind to us, I guess."

"Since your father wasn't."

"No." Her fists clenched around the rails as she thought back to those echoing words in the eerie halls of Mendel. "Not at all."

"Well," Trojan said, and Emily glanced over at him as she felt a ripple of nervousness swirl up from him, "since we're on this subject, what do you think is gonna happen to Lily?"

"To Lily?"

"Yeah. She's an Extended too, even if she's not as heavily-modified as she could've been."

Her stomach turned at the idea of what Lily might have been. And it all turned worse as she considered Trojan's point. She wasn't a whole lot older than Lily, but she certainly _felt_ older and no matter how either of them felt, some bureaucracy somewhere would probably insist that Lily have a parent, or a guardian, or something.

But that was an even crazier idea. Emily was still acutely aware of the fact that she was still only sixteen years old. That was no age to go calling oneself a parent. Then again, it was no age to be a soldier, or to go killing her father, or anything else she'd been doing lately.

And yet it was still an unsettling thought, for entirely different reasons as well. Thinking of what Lily would need only brought her mind back to her own mother, and the seed of hope hiding somewhere in Unit Zero-Two.

"Well," she said quietly, "that's for after the war."

"Yeah," agreed Trojan, "but, well, might as well start thinking about it now."

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

The lights came on with a crash and Unit Zero-Two, standing on an empty gantry in what had previously been a darkened mobile suit hangar, squinted at the sudden glare. As her eyes adjusted, she looked up—and her jaw dropped in disbelief.

"A...Gundam?" she asked.

At her side, Vice Marshal Kira Yamato put his hands on the railing and nodded. "The ZGMF-X401VL Amaranth. Built on the frame of DSSD's Stargazer."

Zero-Two stared in disbelief at the white and silver mobile suit, with its beam wing emitters, the six DRAGOONs built into binders on its back, and that huge double-barreled beam rifle fashioned out of two "Barrus" particle cannons. And there was only one reason why they'd used the Stargazer as a base for this unit: locked up in those binders were the parts for the militarized Voiture Lumiere system. The power that made the Nightfall so formidable and made her enemy so difficult to beat, the power that had trashed the Providence ZAKU so effortlessly, would be hers to command.

Against _her_. Zero-Two cringed. All those tempting images of a life different from this one...but at the cost of leaving behind the comforting routine of automation and abandoning everything she was meant to be, to struggle against her own nature and try to bend the arc of her destiny somewhere else...

"You're going to be part of the Goliath's neural matrix," Kira explained. "The Goliath can't operate without two Newtypes whose brainpower it can draw on as needed. Marshal Sunogachi will be in the control room. You'll have to stand by, as the, ah, final line of defense for the Goliath, as it were." He paused. "And you'll have a special assignment during the battle."

"About the Nightfall?" she asked.

Kira nodded solemnly. "The Amaranth was designed particularly to take her down. It should be all you need."

Zero-Two looked back at the silver Gundam and crushed her doubts. Yes, all she needed was right here.

—

"That was supposed to go differently," grumbled Kara Guinness, arms crossed in the pilot's lounge overlooking the _Fortuna_'s mobile suit hangar. Down below, the mechanics were putting the finishing touches on another round of repairs for the three VaROZ mobile suits. The damage to the machines had been light, but the damage to the egos of the pilots...well, that wasn't the mechanics' problem.

Gary Talon glanced at her in annoyance. "Are you still brooding about that?"

"Stop, both of you," Juarez said, before a fight could develop. "This isn't the time for that shit. We're going to be moving out in only a matter of days." They both looked inquisitively at him. "Orders from High Command. The fleet is marshaling around Messiah and the secret fleet is undergoing its testing. It's literally almost over."

Kara blanched. "Then...you mean the Goliath...?"

"Yes," Juarez said. He landed softly on the floor and stared down solemnly at his silent mobile suit. "Long story short, we are going to guard the ZAKU Goliath as it descends to Earth and protect its flanks as it starts destroying population centers and important infrastructure."

Silence drifted over the room like a cloud. "That'll kill a lot of people," Gary said quietly.

"Yes," Juarez replied. "That's the point."

Kara looked down at her own machine and tried to crush the knot in her stomach. But the thought of the Goliath plowing through cities and wiping out millions of people at once sent a shiver down her spine. A shiver of recognition.

She tried to remind herself that it was necessary—but these days, even that sounded hollow.

—

The door of his office aboard the _Fortuna_ slid shut and Kira Yamato let out a heavy sigh. The final preparations for ZAFT's strike on the Earth, the vast sum of this war. A fleet had to be built, a second fleet had to be prepared, a superweapon had to be completed, and soldiers had to be prepared for the greatest battle the world had ever seen.

Operation _Advent_. That was what Valentine had decided to call this thing. The Advent, the second coming of a hero who would make the world right and just, who would burn away those who would do evil and deliver the chosen and righteous people from oblivion. And Kira knew all too well who Valentine had in mind to play the messianic role.

He shook his head. This burden was his to carry, and if he didn't...well, that wasn't worth thinking about.

Instead, he thought back to Fllay. Perhaps in a world of Newtypes, stretching the bounds of human minds and understanding, he could find some way to touch her presence again. He still recalled her at Jachin Due, the calming, comforting familiarity that had drawn him to her...at least until Athrun had gotten in the way.

His blood boiled; he forced it back down. Better to leave that most guarded secret carefully stashed away, so that it could not be used against him.

But someday, he knew he would be with her again. Nobody truly understood the bizarre harmonics of Newtype communication. Perhaps someday he'd find her again. Valentine would understand that theirs was a different relationship. They were together here on Earth, but Fllay inhabited a deeper plane in his soul—and he would find a way to go there once again.

The whole world would understand how to do that someday. And if it had to burn first...so be it. He clenched his mismatched fists. He had made enough sacrifices. It was their turn now.

—

**July 3rd, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

It was strange to finally see one of these mobile suits up close, without having to dodge shots and deal with the rattling and frenzy of battle. Emily leaned forward on the gantry to get a good look at the silent Regen Duel Gundam before her, as the mechanics looked over the complicated armor on its ankles.

At her side, Grey Saiba crossed his arms. "So you're letting us keep them?"

Emily shrugged. "Not my decision to make, but yeah, we are."

"Why?"

She glanced over at him. "Why not? You know these machines better than we do."

Grey looked back up at the Regen Duel's face. "This is the machine I used to help smash up the Twilight Gundam," he said. "I can do quite a bit of damage with it. So can Merau and Erin. You guys trust us enough to let us run around with that kind of power?"

An awkward silence descended over them both for a moment as Emily thought over her response. "If you were going to betray us," she said at last, "you would've done so already. And," she looked over at him again, "you wouldn't have flinched when I mentioned Volgograd."

Grey did just that as the memories threatened to resurface. "I don't have to be a bad person to go abusing your trust."

"I know. But you won't."

He blew out an annoyed breath through his nose. "I dunno how you can be so confident of that, but whatever."

Emily sighed. "It has its downsides."

—

Rau Le Creuset held back a grin as he felt Emily's presence drifting about the base. She had come back with all kinds of brooding ideas from that little confrontation with her father on Mendel, and that suited his purposes just fine. And she'd come back more determined than ever to rescue Unit Zero-Two. Even better.

Of course, it had come at the cost of the Mendel colony itself. Rau thought back bitterly to the six months he'd spent there after the Junius War, undergoing highly experimental and probably illegal chemical therapy under a less than ethical doctor's watchful eye to stave off the worst of his genetic deterioration. But sacrifices were necessary and at this point, he figured he'd wrung all the use he could from that little graveyard.

If he knew Valentine Sunogachi's crazed little mind, he knew she would not pass up the opportunity to launch the one decisive orgy of bloodletting her increasingly failing grasp on reality required as the Earth Alliance crumbled. And if the Goliath was a reality now, she would have concentrated incredible destructive power into a single massive mobile weapon. And on his side of the fence, he had a weapon of his own, with a mind that was likewise fading from the world. All she needed was enough despair to act on it.

In the meantime, his Newtype senses had not failed to pick up the odd note of coldness in his interactions with Captain Hawke. No doubt Shinn or Athrun had finally managed to convince her of the awful truths in his past. But it was too late now. Everyone was too late.

He smiled as he felt Emily's presence again. For so many years, he had waited to bring down justice on this miserable world, and now—_finally_—it was all coming to pass.

—

"Adopting?"

The word bounced around the walls of Athrun's bunk on the _Minerva_, and Viveka shifted awkwardly where she sat on his bed. "Yeah," she said, "it's...an idea I've been kicking around, ever since..." She trailed off and looked back at him.

Sitting at his desk, Athrun seemed entirely thunderstruck. "You...want to adopt an Extended...with me?"

Viveka glanced away nervously. "Well, uh, when you put it like that, maybe we're moving too fast...?"

Silence enveloped them both as Athrun sat back. "I guess now is the time to tell you," he said. "Copland has asked me to become Orb's new administrator after the war, pending a return to independence. He'd put me in charge of rebuilding Orb—physically, economically, politically, everything."

"So...you could basically shape the country any way you wanted?"

"That's why he chose me, I guess." He shrugged. "I'd be the most trustworthy to make sure Orb is something positive, or something."

Viveka stared down at the floor. "So...what does this mean...?"

"Well," he said, "it means I had a question for you—but since you asked yours first..." He shook his head. "I have no idea how we could even raise an Extended. Raising a normal kid sounds like enough of a challenge, but...well, imagine raising Stella. That's pretty much what I'm thinking of."

"I know," Viveka answered. She trailed off with a frown, and then looked back up at Athrun and decided not to worry. "This is gonna sound crazy, but when Emily told me that she'd killed our father and I told her it didn't bother me, well, I kinda lied. I've been thinking about how we don't have our parents anymore, and how those kids...aren't really that different from my sister, when you think about it."

"So you want to give at least one of them the chance to have a better life," Athrun finished, and Viveka nodded. He sat back thoughtfully. "Well, then I guess it's time for my question. After the war, I'd have to move to Orb to be its administrator, and it would be a difficult and demanding job. And I probably can't do it alone. So—"

"Yes, I'll go with you."

Athrun smiled. "Who needs Newtypes when I have you?"

—

With the sound of the hangar dulled by the Zulfiqar Gundam's armor, Shinn Asuka sat back in the cockpit and closed his eyes as the hatch shut and wrapped him in darkness. Technically, he was supposed to be working on adjustments to the OS, but that could wait.

Instead, he let his mind drift back to the _Minerva_'s battle with the _Fortuna_. He felt these days as though he was no longer in control of his life, as though destiny was sweeping him to a final conclusion in some long, torturous story. And it left him feeling nothing that his abortive rematch with Kira Yamato had ended so inconclusively. He knew they would meet again before this war was done, and when they did, Kira Yamato would not escape again.

He wrapped his mind around the embers of hatred still burning in his heart. Mayu would not have wanted him to be this way; perhaps if he had been the one to die on that mountainside and she'd survived, she might not have held it against the careless pilot up there who had thoughtlessly blown away a family. But he didn't have Mayu's forgiving nature.

Maybe Kika would have understood. Or maybe she wouldn't have. She hadn't understood when he'd gone headlong against the Freedom Gundam in the first place, but maybe he'd simply never explained it clearly enough. But whenever his thoughts turned back to his once and future foe, he began to miss her desperately and crave the feeling he had that she knew all the answers and she could guide his life back on track. Of course, she couldn't, but he no longer cared.

Thinking of Kika inevitably sent him back to the embers of hatred for the man who had killed her. And that was the point, because even those embers had started to fade as time went on and more pressing enemies than Kira Yamato had reared their ugly heads in his life. But Rey still put his trust in him, or whatever it was that was going on when he saw his old friend's apparition before his eyes, and he was an obvious menace to the world. He would need that hatred to drive him beyond his own limits.

He sighed and wondered if they would have understood. They probably wouldn't. They probably would have wanted him to worry more about what he would do after the war. But he couldn't do that—not yet.

—

**The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

There were many things that spurred Admiral MacIntyre to keep on with his dangerous game and his onerous tasks, and one of them was sitting in front of him in his office. Seri Minamoto hardly looked like the precocious assassin that had paved in blood Robert Meyers' ascent to power. But there was a reason for that.

"As an Extended," MacIntyre said, "legally, you would probably be free from any liability for what you've done in his service."

Seri cast her eyes towards the floor. "Legally."

"And as for the rest, I can't help you with that."

"I know," she said, "but...he's going to make me keep doing this. And I'm tired of it. I can't take it anymore." She looked back up at him with those big blue eyes that made him think of poor Alison. "I...just want to stop."

MacIntyre sighed sadly. "If you want to stop, the only way is to do it again. There's no way to guarantee your safety otherwise."

"I know," she repeated, and hung her head. "One more time. I'll do it one more time. But anymore..."

The old man risked a smile. "I see he inspires no loyalty in you either."

Seri buried her face in the palms of her hands. "I just want to have a kind of normal life for once. I look around at the other senators' kids and their staff's kids and it makes me wonder why I can't be like that too."

"Well then," MacIntyre said, "if we're going to make that happen, you know what you need to do."

She sat back up and scrubbed the tears away. "I understand."

—

**July 4th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_**, Debris Belt**

Lord Djibril fought down the urge to smash his cane into something as he drifted down the corridors of the _Ahura Mazda_.

It was intolerable. Even before his fleet could set out, someone had caught wind of the feelers he'd dispatched to Rear Admiral Garcia over at Artemis—and before he could do anything about it, the Eurasian Federation had swept in to arrest him. Djibril supposed it wasn't all that surprising; Eurasian High Command had always been looking for reasons to sack that sorry excuse for an officer, and if Djibril himself had ever made it to Artemis, he probably would have cut the useless bastard's throat and left it at that himself. But Garcia's fall meant Artemis would not be a safe haven for his loyalists, and that left them out in the Debris Belt—prey to whatever passed through and found them.

And then there was ZAFT. Their fleet had returned to Lagrange Point 5. Meyers, the fool, wasn't doing anything to stop them. His troops had disabled the Requiem and destroyed the relay points, and the Alliance's former space fleets were busy searching for _him_ instead of worrying about ZAFT.

It was all the more intolerable as Djibril realized that he was watching the impending end of civilization and he was apparently the only one in the universe who realized it. Everything had led up to this day, when the Coordinators would show their true colors and try to bring the world crashing down. He had laid the pieces so carefully so that they would not survive it. And yet he was a fugitive and Valentine Sunogachi was about to bring Armageddon to Earth.

He clenched his fist around his cane. If the Earth Sphere cried out for a hero, he would be there to answer, whether or not they deserved it. A blue and clean world was far more important than the petty machinations of politics.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"I'm glad you could attend our little ceremony," Valentine Sunogachi said with an expectant grin as Unit Zero-Two snapped a rigid salute to the Marshal of ZAFT. At her side, Kira shifted nervously. The three of them passed through a door onto a gantry in yet another darkened hangar, but this one, Zero-Two realized, was no ordinary mobile suit bay. This was a warship hangar. The lights came on with a crash and Zero-Two could not hide her shock at what she saw.

A huge mountain of red and gold armor stretched up before her, larger than a warship. Four enormous sets of beam shield equipment stretched off its broad shoulders. A massive cannon sat in its right hand. It dwarfed the army of black mobile suits assembled around it. Zero-Two backed against the rail and craned her head to see the top of this colossus.

"Behold," Valentine said with arms outstretched, "the ZAKU Goliath." She swept around, cape swirling around her. "It has dozens of beam cannons and missile launchers on its main body. It has a miniaturized version of the NEO-GENESIS system. It has a beam shield derived from the one on Messiah. It has DRAGOONs and an army of Newtype-controlled mobile suit defenders. In every sense of the word, it is unstoppable. And you," she extended a hand towards Zero-Two, "are part of its very _soul_."

"M-Me?" she started.

"I will rely on your help to control the Goliath in battle," she explained, "and I'll need you to protect it from that pesky Nightfall character." She turned back towards the Goliath with utter adoration in her eyes, and at her side, Kira squirmed. "And together we're going to bring justice to this world."

Zero-Two looked back up at the monster machine's faraway head, and a monoeye stared back down at her pitilessly.

_Justice to this world, huh...?_

—

To be continued...


	45. Phase 45: The Stars Will Shudder

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 45 - The Stars Will Shudder

—

**July 5th, CE 77 - Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"We've found him."

The words caught Joseph Copland by surprise and he sat up in his office aboard the _Alexandria_ in Althea Crater's cavernous space dock. "I-I'm sorry...?"

Admiral MacIntyre stared back at him on the screen. "Djibril," he said. "We've found him. We're moving the coordinates to your people now. He's been moving his fleet around the Debris Belt until recently, but now they've stopped." The admiral sat back with what looked like a satisfied smirk. "He tried to take refuge with Admiral Garcia up on Artemis. Didn't work out."

Copland rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well," he said, "that makes things easier and harder for us at the same time."

"And it gets worse," MacIntyre said. "His fleet is positioning itself near L5. It looks like he's trying to draw out ZAFT to turn this into a three-way battle. And if that happens, with us not knowing what tricks he has up his sleeve, he'll have the advantage."

"If that's his plan," sighed Copland. "I rather expect him to make some kind of dramatic statement and try to play hero or something."

"He might," MacIntyre admitted with a shrug. "But either way, we'll have to submit to fighting a battle on a field of his choosing. And that means we have to take no chances when we finally crush him. I need you to throw everything into this battle, Joseph. The _Minerva_. The _Charlemagne_. Everything."

Copland frowned. "One final roll of the dice to decide the fate of the world?"

"If that's what it takes."

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

Only the click of machinery could be heard in Messiah's control room as Valentine Sunogachi stared darkly at the strategic map before her. At her side, Kira fidgeted for a moment, as did Admiral Harkill.

"This might just be a feint," Harkill offered.

"Lord Djibril does not feint," Valentine shot back. "This is a trap."

Harkill's brow furrowed. "For who?"

She extended a hand towards the vast sphere of the Earth. "For Meyers and his lackeys. They must mean to draw out the Alliance's fleets and prompt us to launch our own, so that we can destroy each other and leave him to pick up the pieces."

Kira frowned. "So what do we do?"

"We let them gather before us and crush them, together, in one fell swoop." She whirled around dramatically with a wide grin. "They're making it easy for us. Let Djibril have his epic little decisive battle. They all underestimate us and there's nothing they can do to stop the Goliath. Admiral Harkill," she turned again, "gather the fleet around the _Rodinia_ and prepare for departure."

—

Amaranth. It was a symbol of immortality. How fitting that a Gundam named so would be hers to wield against the Angel of Death.

Unit Zero-Two drifted idly through her bunk deep in the bowels of Messiah. Indeed, the Amaranth was quite a machine. The Stargazer's fine-tuned, highly responsive frame and the Voiture Lumiere system would make it truly a force to be reckoned with.

But she had problems to get over first—like her foe's insistence that there was something in her to "save."

What did that even mean? Did Emily von Oldendorf seriously think she could just disable Zero-Two's mobile suit, drag her out of the cockpit, and...what, they would become friends or something? She occasionally allowed herself to wonder just what her life might become if she let that happen. Always, she ran into a wall as she tried to imagine what she would do with herself as something other than a human weapon to enforce someone else's will.

She had been tailored even before birth to be a weapon. The enormous Newtype powers of her genetic mother combined with Coordinator enhancements and punishing training to create her skill and effectiveness. But against this Emily girl, she had been little more than a roadblock.

Life beyond ZAFT. It was impossible to imagine, really. She had been built with only one destiny in mind, and here she was, fulfilling it. The rest of the world had no place for someone with nothing but military skills and no ability or desire to imagine for herself what to do with them. If ZAFT turned her loose, soon enough she would just be someone else's minion. She knew what she was, and she knew well the value of knowing one's station in life.

Emily von Oldendorf did not appear to know that. Still she clung to the delusion that destiny was hers to control, that the universe would bend, that the pitiless cosmic forces that had arranged her life so far and drenched it in blood could somehow be made to do as she willed. The universe was not like that. The universe was as cold and unfeeling as the vat in which she'd spent her infancy in lieu of a womb. This war was as good a piece of proof as any of that miserable truth.

The world did not bend. But humans did—and as she clenched her fists, Zero-Two resolved to teach her meddlesome enemy that lesson, once and for all.

—

**July 6th, CE 77 - Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_**, Debris Belt**

_во имя отца, сына и святого духа_.

Crayt Markav finished the sign of the cross over her chest and stood back up in her meager office aboard the _Ahura Mazda_. Of course the Lord would guide her—He never steered her wrong—but she was not the only one who would need His guiding light.

The world was coming apart at the seams, and the Phantom Pain had so little to show for it. There were blasphemers everywhere, but Crayt willed herself not to lose faith now. The world was not going mad because of her actions; it had been others who had held her back. Now ZAFT had returned and made clear its intent to destroy all creation; now usurpers had taken over in the Alliance's member nations and turned their awesome power against each other; now the Resistance breathed once more, when it had once teetered on the edge of annihilation.

But God had not sent her here to fail. She stared up at the cross on her wall, resolution rising in her chest. He had sent her here with a purpose, to punish the sinful and to pave the way for a righteous new world. He had given her these mystical Newtype powers for that purpose. She would have a taste of the Lord's clairvoyance, so long as she turned that power to the task of enforcing His will.

God had not sent her here just for this. God had not given her the Vishnu, even with that obnoxious name from some heathen deity, to see her fail. God had not turned His back on her.

She would just have to persevere—and persevere she would. The world, after all, was mired in wickedness and hopeless depravity. Through her, the Lord would speak—and make it right.

—

The Crusader Gundam was silent as Sven Cal Bayan finished his work on the operating system and sat back for a moment's rest. That irritating inner child of his had been quiet lately. He couldn't decide if that was a good sign or not. Maybe it meant he had, at long last, finally realize the true depth of his hopelessness. It probably didn't help that the Atlantic Federation had put an arrest warrant on his head—so if he tried to leave now, he'd just be hunted down and thrown into a prison anyway.

That was an even worse option than trying to hide from the long arm of the powerful. Rotting in a prison cell with only his cheerful younger self to keep him company and remind him of the life he might have led had fortune not intervened otherwise and sent him on this miserable path into the Phantom Pain would surely drive him mad.

He closed his eyes and thought back to the days when he _was_ that cheerful little boy. The likes of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking had been his heroes. He had actually studied math willingly, no small feat for a boy then his age, because he knew that mastering mathematics was one of the steps he would have to take if he ever wanted to travel out beyond humanity's comfortable cradle and see for himself the wonders of the cosmos. His parents had given him a telescope for his birthday at one point, and as far as he'd been concerned, that was just the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. Saturn was no longer an idea illustrated by photos in books and websites; it was something he could _see_, something with rings that he could look at for himself, something that existed somewhere out there. And the telescope hadn't satisfied him, so he'd resolved to go there himself someday.

And then came the bombing and the foster care and Murata Azrael and the training, and all that, he supposed, had been stomped out of him. Or at least shoved into the corner of his mind where the little imp of possibility dwelled.

He idly wondered if he could get away. Some people took trips out to the handful of colonies at Mars every once in a while. Maybe if he could squirrel himself away there...surely Djibril or the Atlantic Federation wouldn't think to go all the way out there for him...and he would even get to stand on the surface of Mars...

But that wouldn't happen either. He opened his eyes and found the cold, familiar confines of a mobile suit cockpit. Some people's dreams just didn't come true—and besides, what use were dreams if the dreamer couldn't survive?

—

"So," Shams said awkwardly, "what exactly _is_ the plan?"

He glanced over at Mudie in the _Ahura Mazda_'s decidedly sullen crew lounge. She shrugged. "I dunno. But we're getting our meals from Djibril's loyalists, so..."

Shams sighed as he leaned against the wall. "What a clusterfuck..." He shook his head. "I mean, it's not like we're gonna _win_ this war or anything now. So why stick around?"

"And where do you suggest we go?"

"I have an idea," he said, and glanced around furtively. "The Junk Guild takes people from pretty much any background, no questions asked. They don't really care. By the same token, if you turn out to have some business with someone else, they may or may not go to bat for you. But if we were to keep it all on the down-low..."

Mudie arched an eyebrow. "You think we can be junk techs?"

"Well, we'd be alive." He raised a finger. "And, they occasionally schedule supply runs and stuff out to far-flung colonies. And by far-flung, I mean, like, Mars. Who's gonna follow us out there?"

She remained skeptical, but looked away all the same. "How would we even get there...?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," he said. "But we have to go. We can't stay here forever. It's a sinking ship. And..." He shook his head one more time. "And I think we deserve better than that."

Mudie frowned and stared up at the ceiling ruefully. "Do we...?"

—

**Althea Crater lunar base**

The door slid shut and Athrun Zala heaved an exhausted sigh. So much work to do, so little time to do it. Viveka slumped on one of the seats nearby, equally drained.

He glanced through the windows on the hangar's observation deck and his eyes settled on the Judgment Gundam. He pushed down the anger bubbling in his veins. He had to keep that locked away, lest it rush to the surface now and make him do something rash. Rau Le Creuset was a cunning and skilled opponent, and the Judgment Gundam was specifically designed to maximize his abilities. He would need all his own strength to win—all his strength, and probably some help.

As though on cue, Viveka followed his line of sight and settled on the Judgment herself. "So, what exactly is your beef with him, anyway?"

Athrun leaned forward. "You remember my friend, Kira?"

"Yeah."

"Rau is the reason why Kira and I are no longer friends." He bowed his head; these were the memories that hurt. "Kira was the result of a project by some unethical geneticists to create a perfect Coordinator. Between that and the stress from fighting in the Valentine War, he snapped, and Rau manipulated him into joining ZAFT. It drove us apart. He blamed me for killing someone important to him."

"Did you?"

Athrun shrugged. "A shuttle was passing through the battlefield and Rau tricked me into shooting it down. We'd killed friends of each other's at some point earlier in the war, but I had thought we were past that sort of thing." He shook his head. "Kira became his little enforcer. And during the Junius War, he's...the one who killed Cagalli."

Viveka frowned. "So how come you're not going after him?"

"Because," he said with a bitter smile, "for all the bad blood I've got with him, Shinn's got worse."

"What happened to him?"

"Everything. The Freedom Gundam accidentally killed his family during the invasion of Orb in the Valentine War. Then it killed the group of space pirates he'd been hanging out with after he'd deserted ZAFT. And then..." A painful bolt of emotion flashed across his eyes. "Then he killed Lacus Clyne.

Viveka looked away. "So that's what happened to her."

"She wasn't the same after he left," he explained. "She went onto the battlefield at Solomon's Sword and tried to convince him one more time to come back. He killed her. Blew her away without a second thought. And..." He waved his hands sadly. "And here we are."

"And this is all Rau's fault."

"Yes."

"Well then," she said, "I hope you aren't expecting me to just sit back and watch."

Athrun smiled again. "Of course not."

—

Stella Loussier stared curiously at the silent Shinn Asuka as he drifted through their cabin with a ream of data from the Zulfiqar in hand. He blinked at the familiar feeling of being watched and looked up at her. "What is it...?"

"Shinn is acting weird lately..."

He looked back down at the page. "Am I?"

"Shinn is being all sad."

"I thought I was always like that."

"This is different." She frowned thoughtfully. "Is Shinn still gonna be here when the war's done...?"

Shinn blinked in surprise and looked back up at her again. "Wha—of course I will, Stella. What made you think I wouldn't?"

She smiled back. "Good."

The thought bounced around his mind of just what Stella would do without him. Had they broken the psychological conditioning that would have shut her down without him? Had she learned enough to take care of herself and function in the world on her own if need be? Surely someone would watch out for her, but...

He sighed as he looked back at the page. Reason enough, he supposed, to get rid of Kira Yamato: otherwise, the world would never be safe for Stella.

—

The Marduk Gundam clanged as the hatches on the shoulder shells slammed shut. Auel Neider sat back with a sigh on the gantry. It carried lots of guns, sure, but reloading this thing was usually something of a pain. But at least it could've been worse. His mobile suit didn't have a bunch of micromissile tubes to refill, one by one. Sting had bitched up a storm about that one.

He looked back at the Marduk with a tired sigh. He'd been here before, on the eve of some major battle that would decide the fate of the universe or whatever. Then again, every battle sounded like it was going to be the one battle to end them all and it turned out there were a bunch more after it that had to be fought too.

But this one seemed different. Maybe it was because this time the target was Lord Djibril. Auel thought back idly to those days of his own in the Phantom Pain, where he'd allegedly been doing Lord Djibril's bidding. It had never really felt that way. As far as he knew, he'd always just been following Neo's orders, until it became clear that Neo Roanoke did not have the interests of his three Extended at heart.

Captain Lee had. And that was why he was here.

That was why Sting was here too, and that, he'd said, was why he was going to stay here after the war. Someone would need to keep an eye on the Extended. Protect them from the depredations of others. Make sure they were given a chance to have a life beyond the Alliance's control. At the very least, they would have special needs that perhaps no one else but a fellow Extended could understand.

Auel blew out an airy sigh. That sounded like a pretty decent way to spend your life. Maybe it was what Lee would have wanted.

—

The door to the captain's office aboard the _Charlemagne_ slid shut. Erin felt the shuddering in her heart; she had never spoken to the _Charlemagne_'s captain except in the briefest and most professional of instances. But this...

Ivan Danilov leaned forward on his desk. "I understand you've been having something of a moral struggle lately."

Erin swallowed. "Y-Yes sir."

"Well," he said with a smile, "I'm no stranger to those." He gestured for her to speak.

"I...I feel like I'm...betraying everyone back home, by doing this," she said. The words came easier this time—perhaps because she didn't so desperately fear his judgment. "I...heard about what happened, at Volgograd. And I thought it was just stories the Resistance made up, but then we came here and I saw..." She trailed off, and he nodded in understanding. "And back home...they don't know about this."

"I would wager they do," Danilov interrupted. "It's been all over the news."

"But they're going to look at me," she protested, "and think I'm some kind of traitor."

"A traitor to what? To the Phantom Pain?" He waved a hand. "Loyalty is only as noble as what you are loyal to. I learned that lesson over many months. When this war is over and you return home, you won't return as a war criminal. You will return as someone who saw that she did wrong and did something to make it right."

Erin sank back in her seat. "Will my father see it that way...?"

"If he's a man whose esteem you should value, he will."

"That's...what everyone has told me."

"Because it's the truth. Besides which," he leaned back in his own chair, "how your father feels about you is nowhere near as important as how you feel about yourself."

Erin looked down grimly. "I know, sir. I just...need guidance."

Danilov rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. "In that case," he said, "I order you to do what you feel is right."

She looked back up with a small smile. "Yes sir."

—

Emily von Oldendorf had claimed the _Minerva_'s interior observation deck as her own personal brooding cocoon. Rau Le Creuset supposed that at some point she expected to emerge like a butterfly, with beautiful wings of determination and purpose. It was a nice metaphor, of course, but the metamorphic cycle tended to break down if one cut off the cocoon and stomped on it.

He came to a stop at the railing, where Emily was staring out at the grim tableau of Althea Crater's dock as the Resistance fleet prepared for its launch. Nobody knew the details yet, but everyone knew that they were going to fight another battle. A very important battle. Perhaps the last one of the war...or at least the second-to-last.

"What if I can't save her?" she asked quietly. Rau looked down at her questioningly. "What if she won't come with me?"

"Why burden yourself with thoughts like those? Believing in failure will lead to failure."

Emily shook her head. "What if I'm wrong?"

"You're not." He turned towards her fully. "You said yourself you felt the spark of something like your mother within her. You know there's something to work with." He gestured grandly towards the dock. "If you let that go, then you'll have only a world of this to look forward to. Only a world of going from battle to battle, killing people but never changing anything in the world."

Emily did not look convinced, and Rau held back a sigh.

"Consider this a test," he said. "A test by whatever forces have governed your life until now. If you can save this Zero-Two, then you'll know that there is something in this world that can be turned towards good. A sign that the world is not hopelessly lost. But if you can't, then you'll know that everything is beyond salvation. Because what else can this world be if it creates a creature like Zero-Two, someone who has that effect on you, and can only be destroyed?"

Emily looked back up at him. "Is that...it?"

"Would you be willing to be magnanimous towards a world that makes you do all this?"

She hung her head. "I guess not."

Rau put a hand on her shoulder. "Then this is your test, Emily. This is the world's test. The only way you'll know whether or not it can be saved."

He smiled as she bowed her head again. A test, yes. One last test.

—

"I'm sure you've all heard by now that we're going out for a bit," Meyrin Hawke said, to the pilots and as much of the crew as could fit in the _Minerva_'s bridge assembled before her. "So today we'll lay the rumors to rest. We've found Lord Djibril's fleet, and we are going to finish him off." She tapped a point on the _Minerva_'s mapping console. "His fleet's numbers have fluctuated recently, but he's got something in the neighborhood of a hundred warships to call on. We have no idea what nasty little surprises he's got up his sleeve, but we expect to meet our old friends, the mobile armors and the Destroy Gundams." She looked back up at them. "As for Djibril himself...we'll take him any way we can."

The pilots glanced at each other awkwardly, and Meyrin allowed herself a moment to calm down.

"I've shared these concerns with our superiors, including Joseph Copland, and it's only fair I tell you. Since Lord Djibril is cornered and the Alliance's fleet will technically be our allies in this mission, there is a chance that ZAFT may intervene to attack us all at once. We have no intelligence, but I have a hunch—and whenever my hunches are about something bad, they're generally right." She smiled briefly. "So you'll just have to trust me."

Abbey stepped forward. "Of course, if that happens, we'll be there to crush them. And end this war for good."

That seemed to resonate with her crew, and Meyrin straightened up. "The fleet departs in two hours. It's time to bring an end to this madness."

Her thoughts drifted back to Reverend Malchio. To Lacus Clyne. To the last time someone with great power had stepped forward to stop a world careening towards the brink.

_And I won't let you down._

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

The doors hissed open and every soldier in the room leapt to their feet to salute as President Robert Meyers strode into the command center and up onto the dais, where he had easy access to the vast multitude of screens that would let him watch the final destruction of the parasite Lord Djibril.

At his side, Seri glanced around nervously at the preponderance of bodyguards—and the armed soldiers in the dull green of what had until recently been the Earth Alliance Army. And Admiral MacIntyre hobbled into his seat as Meyers stepped forward with a grin.

"We've finally found the criminal Lord Djibril," he said in as booming and commanding a voice as he could muster. "Justice—for the children of Althea and for the people of Earth—is nearly at hand. I expect all of you to fight to your utmost to protect our shared, sacred homeland. Djibril is a cornered animal and he knows it, and he will not go down without a bloody fight. But we stand on the brink of total annihilation of the Phantom Pain. And we must not let this opportunity pass."

One of the Space Force's officers stepped forward. "Sir, the fleets are nearly in position. Djibril's forces are solidifying their defensive line."

"And what of L5?" MacIntyre spoke up.

"Nothing so far," the officer said. "And there's been no report from Romeo 7."

"My emissary is likely just reaching Messiah," Meyers said. "There's nothing to worry about, gentlemen." He stepped forward to resume his speech. "Today, ladies and gentlemen, we enter history. Forces of the Expeditionary Fleet—_commence the attack!_"

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah, Lagrange Point 5**

"Alright," sneered Valentine Sunogachi as she came to a stop by her chair in Messiah's control room, "what the hell is this?"

The screens showed an Earth Alliance shuttle worming its way through the dense shoal zone of Lagrange Point 5. "It's showing an Atlantic Fed IFF," one of the Black Shirts explained. "The pilots say they're carrying ambassadors to discuss an alliance, and those fleet movements we've seen in the Debris Belt. And," the officer swallowed, "peace negotiations."

"Peace negotiations?" Valentine echoed. She glanced at her side, where Kira looked decidedly disturbed. "Who gave them the idea we're interested in peace negotiations?"

"We, um, asked them the same thing," Admiral Harkill spoke up. "They told us they were willing to offer Lord Djibril's head as a goodwill gesture. Something to show that they're not interested in destroying us."

Valentine stepped forward, brow furrowed. "We've heard that before." She turned towards the Black Shirt. "Destroy them."

The officer waved towards one of the men at the control panels—and a moment later, a pair of beams lanced out from Messiah to slice the approaching shuttle in two, and it vanished in a crackling inferno.

And with that, Valentine Sunogachi turned around with a sweep of her cape. "No more games. Admiral Harkill, take command aboard the _Rodinia_. Send out the orders to the special units up ahead. We have waited long enough." She smiled. "It's time."

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt**

The lights of Lord Djibril's warships lit up far in the distance and the mobile suits began to stir. The bridge of the _Minerva_ fell silent with sick anticipation. Off to starboard, the refit _Agamemnon_-class carrier _Queen Victoria_, Admiral Barton's preferred flagship, edged ahead to lead the formation as the Resistance's fleet sailed into battle. The Alliance's fleets stretched out on their flanks, converging on the one point where Lord Djibril had chosen to make his last stand. And up ahead, Meyrin could see the silhouettes of six Destroy Gundams coming to life. Of course he'd brought a few of those to play with. Of course.

Then again, the Atlantic Federation had a few of its own, and Meyrin Hawke _had_ always wanted to see what happened when two Destroy Gundams fought each other.

"Attention all warships of the Resistance," Joseph Copland's voice boomed through the speakers, and all eyes on the _Minerva_'s bridge turned towards the auxiliary screen, where Copland could be seen in his chair on the _Alexandria_'s bridge. "We have fought long and hard for the day when we could finally destroy the Phantom Pain and bring peace and freedom to our world. That day has come. Lord Djibril will throw every terrifying weapon left at his command against you and you will face the desperate resistance of a cornered animal with nothing left to lose. But we are not alone in our battle—and we have justice on our side." He pointed forwards. "All units, begin our operation—and _end this war!_"

Meyrin steeled herself as the ships and mobile suits began to move. "_Minerva_, all ahead, full!"

—

Of course they would be here to stop them.

The explosions blazed around the Zulfiqar Gundam as Shinn Asuka spiraled into battle with a shout and a blaze of fire from his beam rifle. Far down below, the Crusader, Vanguard, and Artemis Gundams split up, as did the squadron of Dark Windams behind them. The Windams broke ranks and continued on ahead; the Vanguard lined itself up for a barrage of beam fire, the Artemis joined in, and the Crusader darted forward, sword in hand and afterimages flickering. Shinn flung his own sword up to deflect the blow.

"Loyal to the last, I see," he said. Sven Cal Bayan glowered back.

"Don't think your battle here will be an easy one, Asuka," he snapped. "You may win—but we are all under orders to fight to the death. You will lose so many ships and so many soldiers that your victory will taste as bitter as defeat."

Shinn smiled back. "I've heard that before."

The Crusader flung its foe back; the Vanguard fired, the Artemis lanced in with a beam saber in hand. Shinn parried the blow with his sword and took off, afterimages flying, as the Crusader and Artemis gave chase.

—

"Up ahead, _Drake_-class with a reflector," Courtney Hieronymus warned as the Proto Chaos sped forward into battle. A formation of mobile suits moved up behind him, with the Kali and Judgment Gundams and Riika's blue Blaze ZAKU Phantom in the lead. "And mobile suits—"

"Watch out!" Stella shouted, and shouldered the Proto Chaos aside—just as a wave of shimmering red beam fire lanced through the formation and four mobile suits disappeared in a blast of fire. The survivors broke their formation and returned fire, and up ahead—

"Those are Gundams!" Riika cried.

The black sky lit up with flashes from the eyes of another squadron of mobile suits. Up ahead sat four Verde Buster units, their beam cannons extended; another squad of black and red Calamity Gundams had formed up behind them with their own cannons at the ready. And from their flanks emerged two more squads of Blu Duel units, charging forward with a hail of beam bolts.

"Break formation! All units, defensive fire!" Courtney barked, and the Proto Chaos launched its gunbarrels. Rau flung the Judgment Gundam forward and let loose a full burst of beam fire that broke the enemy's formation—but they rapidly returned the fire in spades and drove him further back.

"Those things are being piloted by Extended," Rau said. "Djibril must be—"

"There's more!" Stella shouted, and the Kali Gundam dove down below a blazing red beam blast—and up above sat a squadron of Strike E units, with a Launcher Strike E at the lead and leveling off its Agni cannon for another blast. Stella fired back to break up their formation—but three Aile Strike Es came charging down with a wave of beam fire between them to force her back on the defensive.

"Courtney, Riika, leave these to us," Rau instructed; the Judgment fired off its DRAGOONs. "Push through to the fleet. We will open a path. Stella!"

The Kali rushed up next to the Judgment and the two Gundams roared forward, answering the Phantom Pain mobile suits' volleys with a salvo of their own.

—

Sailing into battle with the hum of the Celestial Justice Gundam's engines echoing in his brain, Athrun Zala's eyes darted around the battlefield. Up ahead, a _Nelson_-class battleship lumbered forward, guns blazing. A squad of Resistance mobile suits rushed in from both sides; a trio of CIWS emplacements tore a GINN apart, but a Dagger L managed to get close enough to blow up one of the turrets with its beam carbine. A squad of white and blue Windams emerged from underneath the ship to rip apart the remaining three mobile suits.

"And here we go!" cried Viveka.

The Aurora Gundam blasted forward and pounded the battleship's prow with blasts from the plasma cannons. The warship bucked backwards as missile stores exploded; the Aurora spiraled up through the flames, quickly transformed, and smashed another volley clear through the battleship's hull from overhead. The dying warship vanished in a fireball that fried two of the Windams; the other two rocketed out of the blast and lined up behind the Aurora—

...and then Athrun wiped them both out with a blast from the beam cannons.

"Oh yeah, them," Viveka said with a smirk. "Thanks."

Athrun nodded up ahead. "They spotted a Destroy up there that we'll have to kill before Buckley's fleet can make any progress."

"Well, no time like the present. Let's kick its ass!"

—

"Ramura, move back!" shouted Aoma Vedlow as the Force Impulse Gundam shook and beams slammed against its shield. "Fire support from afar!"

As Aoma's mobile suits scrambled for distance, the Marduk Gundam flung itself up in front of them to deflect a storm of beam fire with its Geschmeidig Panzer system. The Fujin darted out from behind the blue mobile suit and launched its gunbarrels, sending them blazing up ahead. The mobile suits ahead backed away behind their own shields, but their relentless fire did not cease.

"You know, these things were enough of a pain in the ass when there was only one of each," Sting snarled.

Up ahead, a team of Verde Busters, Blu Duels, and Calamities lined up for another blast—and then another squad of Strike Es launched themselves into the fray from above. Auel yelped in surprise and jammed back the controls as a Sword Strike E took a furious swipe at him with its anti-ship sword; he lit up the beam naginata and stabbed it forward to deflect the next blow.

"Back the fuck up, asshole!" he shrieked, and flung the white mobile suit away. He lined up for a blast from the beam guns, only for the other mobile suits to open fire. "Oh, come on—!"

The Fujin's gunbarrels raced up towards the attackers and showered them with missiles and beams. "Jesus fucking Christ...Auel! Move back and charge up the Callidus IIs! I'll box them in!"

—

Emily von Oldendorf considered it very odd that she had a squadron of Dark Windams and three Alliance Gundams following her into battle, looking to her for leadership, as though she had any idea what she was doing out here. Trojan and Lily were there too, but at least they knew better than to look at her as if she was the boss.

"Emily, up ahead," Trojan cut in, and the Green Frame Kai pointed with its custom rifle. Emily followed the gesture and frowned at the sight up ahead. A hulking mobile armor twice the size of a mobile suit, with huge positron cannons on its shoulders and equally huge arms, in addition to two normal-sized arms, and banks of thrusters instead of legs. And then there was that _presence_ from inside...

"Ah," she said, "_you_ again."

"Uh, friend of yours?" Lily started.

Emily switched the frequency. "Grey, there's a mobile armor up ahead. Leave it to me."

Grey frowned. "You're ditching us already?"

"That mobile armor has Crayt Markav in the cockpit." Grey and his other pilots all blanched. "So, leave her to me. Trojan, Lily, you go with them."

"Wait a minute, you're not doing this alone, are you—" Lily started.

"I'm not going anywhere," Grey spoke up. "Markav was the one who ordered the attack on Volgograd. This is personal."

Emily opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes stopped her—and the Hail Buster and Gale Strike didn't appear to be waving off anytime soon either. "O-Okay...Trojan, Lily, you go on ahead. We'll be fine." She turned her eyes back towards the hulking mobile armor ahead. "We've just got some business to take care of first."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"_Drake_-class up ahead, sir, eleven o'clock," the sensor officer said.

Danilov narrowed his eyes. "Portside Gottfrieds, target and destroy."

The _Charlemagne_ plowed forward into the heart of an advancing warship squadron. The mobile suits scattered like flies as the Resistance forces swarmed in from the _Charlemagne_'s massive swirling wake, and the vast black warship's portside beam cannons came to life with a flash. In a moment, a flurry of green beams plowed through the offending warship and tore it to pieces in a fiery explosion.

"Keep up the pace," Danilov ordered. "Push them back. Allow them no breaks."

A trio of Windams rushed in towards the _Charlemagne_'s bridge, only to be torn apart by the ship's CIWS emplacements. A squadron of Resistance mobile suits moved forward—

And then, an instant later, they all disappeared amid a blazing green wall of fire, and then the boxy hulk of a _Girty Lue_-class battleship flickered into existence. Danilov tensed.

"Helm, descend, forty-five degrees!"

The _Charlemagne_ groaned in protest as its prow dipped down and the ship ducked below another salvo from the attacking battleship. The black warship fired back and forced the smaller, nimbler ship off course, and the _Charlemagne_ swung around ponderously towards its foe.

"Reinforcements from four o'clock, captain," Vera spoke up—just as a _Laurasia_-class frigate and a _Nelson_-class battleship joined two _Drake_-class destroyers in peppering the _Girty Lue_-class's hull with firepower.

"Then leave that thing to them," Danilov said. "Helm, return to course. Target the center of Djibril's fleet."

He turned his eyes ahead, back towards the ships in the middle of Lord Djibril's advancing fleet.

—

To be continued...


	46. Phase 46: The ZAKU Goliath

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 46 - The ZAKU Goliath

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

"Admiral Alvarez reports the first line is holding steady," one of the soldiers reported.

Robert Meyers sat in his chair in the Pentagon's command room and stared in what almost seemed like annoyance at the banks of screens before him. "So that's what those 'Immortals' were." MacIntyre glanced inquiringly at him. "We found references to an 'Immortals Regiment' in some of Vasserot's messages, but we hadn't been able to find out what exactly they were in time for the battle."

MacIntyre turned his attention towards the screen, where a force of some of the Phantom Pain's most expensive and successful machines were brutally assaulting the front lines of the fleet. So far, the combined fleets of the Earth Alliance's former member nations and the Resistance were holding their own—but they weren't making much progress and Lord Djibril had six Destroy Gundams waiting in the wings. The _Minerva_ would have to take care of them.

He sat back. "Movement around L5?" he called.

"Nothing, sir," another man answered. MacIntyre's brow furrowed.

"There's been no contact from Romeo 7 either," he rumbled. "Meyers—"

"I would hardly expect a report so soon," Meyers scoffed. "They probably only just arrived. Negotiations like this take time."

"Even so, they should have at least checked in."

Meyers waved a hand. "I see no reason for concern at this point. They will do their job so that we can do ours."

MacIntyre glanced involuntarily over at Seri.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt**

Yet another _Drake_-class destroyer went up in flames, but Meyrin Hawke merely noted in the back of her mind as her ship's third warship kill of the day as the _Minerva_ plunged through the opening in the Phantom Pain's lines. Perhaps this would be the breakthrough they were looking for—

Instead, the _Minerva_ suddenly swerved to starboard to avoid a blinding pair of positron cannon blasts. Meyrin looked on with a frown as the columns of light dissipated to reveal the dark and curved hull of an _Archangel_-class battleship before her.

"That's the _Beelzebub,_" Abbey started. "It survived this far?"

Yes, the _Beelzebub_, the Phantom Pain warship that had led Field Marshal Markav's effort to destroy Hyderabad for not turning over a prominent Resistance leader. Meyrin remembered that well. The Resistance had marked that ship for death.

"This far," she said, "but no further. Chen, charge the Tannhäuser. Malik, I'll leave the evasive maneuvers to you. Flank speed."

The _Minerva_ rattled as the engines roared to life and the winged warship circled around its legged opponent. Meyrin cringed as the Gottfried cannons opened fire and forced her ship to dive off course before the Tristans could respond—and when the two battleships circled around back into position, the Tristans could only score a glancing blow off the _Beelzebub_'s laminated armor.

"Missiles, incoming!" Burt cried.

"CIWS, fire!"

Bullets tore the attacking missiles out of the sky and Meyrin clenched her fists around the captain's seat's armrests. The _Archangel_-class had twice the firepower of her own ship—but she had speed, and she knew how to use it.

—

Sword met sword and sparks ripped across the black sky as the Zulfiqar and Crusader Gundams did battle. Shinn darted to the right just as the Vanguard Gundam lunged up behind the Crusader with a pulsing blast from its beam cannons; he ducked again as the Artemis attacked from behind with a backhanded beam saber swipe. But the Crusader barreled through between them both and dropped down for another furious swordfight.

"What happened to you guys?" Shinn sneered. "You used to have pretty tight teamwork. Now you're like a bull in a china shop."

The Crusader slammed the Zulfiqar back with a hard horizontal swing. The Artemis darted up into the Zulfiqar's path, beam saber pulled back for a lethal stab, but Shinn dove out of harm's way before the blade made contact. The Vanguard opened fire again; the Zulfiqar wove its away around the shots and backed up with a blazing long-range cannon blast to separate the three Gundams.

"Quit running!" Sven barked, and the Crusader charged forward with another sweeping swing of its sword. Shinn whirled away again and jammed his sword upward to deflect the Artemis's beam saber, then darted to the right and dodged a salvo from the Vanguard.

Undaunted and with afterimages flying around it, the Crusader hefted its blade and charged after the Zulfiqar with a scream from its pilot. Shinn ground his teeth as he swung the sword down and his Gundam rattled under the blow.

—

With a blazing trail of exhaust in its wake, the Aurora Gundam elegantly spiraled down into battle in its sleek mobile armor mode and wove its away around a storm of firepower. Down below, a squadron of Dark Windams backed away as they fired shells and beams at the charging red machine—but it veered away from their blasts, abruptly transformed, and blasted back with its plasma cannons to blow two of the Windams away before they could react. The survivors split their formation—only to be torn apart as the Celestial Justice Gundam descended from above, and two more Windams vanished in the onslaught.

The Aurora surged forward and drove the eight survivors back—but then they turned tail and fled as more beams lanced into their ranks from behind. Viveka glanced over her shoulder and smirked at the sight of a force of Resistance mobile suits moving in, weapons ready.

"Karim, take your men around," Athrun cut in. "Up ahead—"

A wall of beam fire rushed out of the darkness. Athrun and Viveka darted aside, but several of the Resistance mobile suits disappeared in the blaze. Athrun bit back a curse as the black skies lit up with a storm of beam fire from a charging Destroy Gundam.

"Oh, of course," Viveka muttered. "Now you come out and play."

"Leave this thing to us," Athrun instructed. "Get around it. Viveka, come on."

The Justice and Aurora rocketed forward. The Destroy ticked its Aufprall Dreizhen cannons to the side to follow the two Gundams, but its blast caught nothing; next it unleashed a hail of missiles as it backed up, and the two Gundams darted apart under a protective screen of CIWS fire.

The smoke blew apart and Viveka frowned at the sight of the Destroy once again—this time standing tall in its towering mobile suit mode, hands open, eyes shining.

"We've never used these new machines against a Destroy," Athrun said, and licked his lips. "Should be interesting."

The Destroy opened fire; the Gundams rocketed apart and went on the attack.

—

"Oh shit," muttered Trojan Noiret as the Green Frame Kai shook.

Up ahead loomed a team of four hulking Euclid mobile armors. Trojan cringed at the sight and he imagined the twelve Dark Windam pilots from the _Charlemagne_ in formation behind him were doing the same—but Lily seemed preternaturally delighted.

"Y'know, I helped kill a couple of these things at Terminal, remember?" she gushed. "And now I have an even cooler ride! This'll be a piece of cake."

"There are four of them, Lily."

"I know!"

The Twilight Cortana rocketed ahead despite Trojan's sputtering. He glanced over his shoulder at the dozen Dark Windams behind him. "Um, Joel, was it? You guys hang back here and wait for us to make an opening."

The former Phantom Pain pilot smirked. "If she doesn't get you killed first."

"Yeah, that's the fun part," he sighed, and the Green Frame Kai took off, hefting a Gigalauncher in its left hand and its custom rifle in its right.

Up ahead, the four Euclids had broken their formation to surround the Cortana from all sides and shower it with beam fire. Lily fired back with the red Gundam's DRAGOONs, but as usual, the blasts did nothing against the positron reflectors. Trojan took his opportunity to lunge into the battle with a shout and pummel the nearest Euclid with bazooka shells; the mobile armors broke ranks again and whipped around to shower him with beam fire and force him back on the defensive, but the pause was long enough for Lily to back away and set herself up to return fire with the long-range cannons.

"You have to have a _plan_ when you fight these things," Trojan groaned. "You can't just charge in headfirst!"

"Well, planning is _your_ job!" Lily shot back. The Euclids charged and let loose a storm of missiles; the Cortana backed away, CIWS blazing, and the Green Frame lunged up over it and opened fire again.

—

He could feel them approaching. They may yet be too far off for some Newtypes, but not for Rau Le Creuset and his years of experience and fine-tuning of his senses. A vast knot of hatred and excitement, much larger than he'd expected—perhaps Valentine had been wise enough to hide the bulk of her forces for this final confrontation—but it was all approaching the battlefield. Obviously Valentine meant to make a statement.

Which was all just as well, because Rau needed a good opportunity to arm the ever-despairing Angel of Death with a tool to realize her destiny. But first, she would have to find that Unit Zero-Two girl and learn the hardest lesson of all in this cruel and vicious Cosmic Era: nobody could really be saved.

The Judgment Gundam whirled into battle on its own with its DRAGOONs blazing, Rau having long since left Stella to Riika and Courtney—ostensibly to go "hunt down one of those Destroy units." And he supposed he might indulge on one of those along the way, but he had more important matters to settle and chewing up one of Lord Djibril's toys would simply have to be a nice fringe benefit.

Up ahead, a _Drake_-class destroyer loomed in his path—but the DRAGOONs flashed to life and rained beam fire onto the short warship, ripping it apart. Rau slid past as the warship exploded and turned his sights deeper into the fleet. Lord Djibril's flagship was somewhere out there, but the Blue Cosmos leader's taste for ostentation had been defied by his hasty flight from Daedalus Crater. He would have to be found elsewhere.

In the meantime...he glanced upward at a squad of Dark Windams approaching from above. The DRAGOONs lashed out again and sliced them to pieces amid a storm of beam fire. One of the Windams slipped through and rushed down from behind—but the Judgment simply turned and blew it away with a beam rifle blast through the cockpit.

The sky lit up with beams again, but not from the Judgment's DRAGOONs. Rau turned in surprise—and found a set of mobile suits with the faces of Gundams staring him down.

"Ah, so you're those 'Immortals' the Alliance soldiers were chattering about," he said with a smirk. "This should be interesting."

The Gundams charged and Rau grinned as he went on the counterattack.

—

"Alright! Ready!" Auel screamed. "Move your asses!"

The Fujin and Force Impulse Gundams darted apart and the gunbarrels lurched out of the way—just as the Marduk Gundam lined up its two Callidus Mk II cannons and fired away. Two pulsing red blasts lanced out towards the Alliance mobile suits clustered up ahead. Most of them darted out of harm's way—but a Calamity Gundam and a Blu Duel were not so lucky and vanished in the shots.

"Well, that's two," Sting started. "Let's—" He grunted in pain as one of the Aile Strike Es rammed him with its shoulder and threw him back, driving him into his seat. The gunbarrels blazed to life again, but the white and black mobile suit darted away to safety behind its shield and the surviving mobile suits intensified their fire.

"Then we'll have to see if they fall for that again," Aoma groaned; the Impulse backpedaled behind its shield as beams slammed into it relentlessly. "Unless either of you two have another genius idea."

"Hey, fuck you, I got two of them!" Auel wailed.

"Shut up, Auel," Sting interrupted.

The surviving Phantom Pain mobile suits unleashed a storm of beams that sliced past the three Gundams and forced them back behind the Marduk's Geschmeidig Panzer. The bolts veered back towards the Phantom Pain units and pushed them on the defensive; a moment later, Aoma lunged out of hiding and squeezed off a beam rifle blast that stabbed straight through the cockpit of one of the Verde Busters and blew it apart.

"There!" Sting shouted. "Auel, deflect the blasts, turn their fire back on—"

Instead, a wave of artillery shells pounded into the Fujin and Marduk and knocked them both back on their heels; the Force Impulse ducked away again before the shells could reach it.

"Oh, for Christ's fucking sake," spat Auel, "you aren't supposed to learn _that_ quickly!"

The Impulse circled around the enemy Gundams. "Just get them to fire beams again," she said, "and deflect them back. Kill them one at a time."

One of the Blu Duels lashed out with a flurry of beam gun blasts that slammed against the Impulse's shield; Auel lined up for a wave of fire from the Marduk's own beam guns that sent the Phantom Pain units scattering for cover. One of the Aile Strike Es slipped through the blasts and charged towards the Marduk; Sting met it with a shout and a volley of beam rifle fire.

—

"Oh my God, it's one of _those_ things!"

Stella turned in alarm at the sound of Riika's voice—and promptly cringed at the sight of a Destroy Gundam charging headlong into battle. She flung herself back as the Destroy leveled off its Aufprall Dreizhen cannons and let loose a thundering blast. Riika's ZAKU and Courtney's Proto Chaos dove to the side—but the blast washed over several of the Resistance mobile suits behind them and each vanished in a plume of flames.

"Dammit," hissed Courtney, "we can't stop that—"

"Stella will deal with it."

The Kali Gundam put itself between the Resistance units and the massive Destroy as it transformed. Riika blinked in surprise.

"Wha—what do you mean?"

"Tell the others to go back and break through somewhere else," Stella said.

Courtney arched an eyebrow. "You're going to fight this thing yourself?"

Stella glowered across the battlefield as the Destroy's eyes lit up with a dreadful flash. "Riika and Courtney can stay," she said at last, "but don't die."

Abruptly, the Kali launched itself forward and a beam saber sprang to life in its hand. Courtney and Riika watched the nimble black Gundam go in disbelief, before Courtney shook his head. "All units, fall back and find another point to break through," he barked. "We will support Loussier. Move out!"

Riika cringed as the ZAKU and Proto Chaos rushed after the Kali Gundam. "Are you sure about this, Courtney? We can't take that thing—"

"We can't," Courtney said, "but _she_ can."

—

The hulking Vishnu swept one of its massive arms towards the Eclipse, a huge golden beam saber blazing from an emitter above the wrist. Emily cringed and hurled her Gundam into a tight somersault over the blade—but the Vishnu darted forwards to avoid her finishing beam sword stab. The mobile armor whipped around and rained beam fire on the Eclipse; the Hail Buster flickered into existence overhead and fired off a hyper impulse cannon blast, but it landed harmlessly against the shimmering barrier of a positron reflector.

"Even to the last, you resist me, you little sacrilege!" snarled Crayt Markav. "The Angel of Death serves the Lord! Know your place!"

Emily scowled and backed away—just in time for the Regen Duel to lunge up in front of her and pummel the Vishnu with a bazooka shell to the face. She whirled around Grey's mobile suit and closed in, but the Vishnu recovered quickly and warded her off with another blaze of firepower.

"Dammit, that reflector—!" Merau started.

"Pierce it with beam sabers and blades," Emily instructed. "Erin, you're coming with me!"

The Gale Strike dropped in next to the Eclipse, swords in hand. "A-Alright—"

"Don't hesitate!" Grey cried, even as he backpedaled under the Vishnu's furious assault. "This is the bitch that ordered Volgograd!"

Emily snaked her way through the beams and charged in—and then swung her beam sword up to deflect the Vishnu's shimmering blade. "I will annihilate _all of you!_" Crayt shrieked. "All of you! All of you will understand the might of the Lord!"

"You've got a pretty fucked up god!" Grey shot back, and the Regen Duel punctuated him with another bazooka shell that clipped the Vishnu's shoulder. The mobile armor flung the Eclipse back and its positron cannons lit up; Emily lunged to the left and the other three Gundams scattered amid the Eclipse's afterimages as the two Lohengrin cannons blazed to life.

With a scream from its pilot, the Gale Strike lunged up behind the Vishnu, swords raised high. The mobile armor whirled around, beam blade shining to life, to deflect the two blades—but then the Hail Buster slammed it in the back with another beam cannon blast. Crayt hurled the Gale Strike away and turned again—but the Eclipse was there, beam sword blazing, and the blades clashed again in a shower of sparks.

"None of you will survive!" Crayt snarled. "None of you, and especially not _you_, Angel of Death!"

Emily scowled. "I don't have time for you."

"You don't have a choice!" Crayt shot back. The Vishnu surged forward and drove the Eclipse back; Emily rocketed away in a blaze of afterimages and the beam cannons flashed to life again.

—

**The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Robert Meyers sat up in surprise at the soldier's words.

"A whole bunch of contacts from Lagrange Point 5," the man said. "Heat signatures are consistent with ZAFT, but there are twice as many as intel estimated."

At Meyers' side, MacIntyre blanched. "_Twice_ as many? But—how? We've been tearing their fleet apart for months!"

"They've been hiding their true numbers in the shoal zone, where we wouldn't be able to observe them," Meyers said with an approving smirk. "Sunogachi is more cunning than I thought."

"Meyers, we still haven't heard from Romeo 7," MacIntyre protested. "And it's been far too long to assume that they're simply in negotiations. If the ZAFT fleet is setting out, we have to assume the worst—"

"Their first target will be Djibril, the man who cost them their homeland," Meyers said with a dismissive wave. "That makes us allies, if only temporarily. And once they reach the battlefield and see the kind of power we have, they'll think twice."

MacIntyre looked back at the screens. "Sir, ZAFT is not going to be reasonable. They gassed Copernicus, even though Copernicus had nothing to do with the Earth Alliance—"

"But that's just it," Meyers said with a confident smile. "From their perspective, it makes perfect sense to attack targets like Copernicus. The Alliance's advantage over ZAFT stems from its size and capacities. ZAFT was simply targeting those." He gestured at the screen. "Now they're walking onto a field of battle where their advantage is nullified." And with that, he got to his feet. "Inform Admiral Dougherty that it's time to release the Destroys."

The admiral glanced disbelievingly at Meyers. How he could remain so calm in the face of a ZAFT fleet that was twice as big as reported was going to have to be a mystery for the ages, as he looked back meaningfully at Seri over his shoulder.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_

"Red Line is holding position," one of the bridge crew reported.

"Tell them to move up further," Stone ordered. "Keep the pressure on the enemy. Keep them attacking. Waste their numbers."

Lord Djibril leaned forward in his chair as the explosions flashed outside the _Ahura Mazda_. The Immortals were holding up alright; the Destroys were stemming the enemy's tide; the fleet was taking losses, but inflicting just as many. But the façade was developing cracks. The _Charlemagne_ was making a breakthrough at one point, the _Minerva_ at another.

The _Charlemagne_. Djibril frowned as bitter memories surfaced. Perhaps if he'd chosen someone more ruthless than that marshmallow of a man, Ivan Danilov, then _all_ of these problems might have been headed off.

"Admiral, Green Line is requesting reinforcements," another bridge officer spoke up. "And the _Beelzebub_ is reporting damage against the _Minerva_."

Admiral Stone looked inquiringly towards Djibril. "We don't have reserves, sir. If we're going to reinforce someone, we'd have to weaken one of our lines somewhere else."

"This is a battle to the death," Djibril answered. "We have nothing to spare. And nothing will be spared for victory."

The bridge officer glanced at his console in defeat. "Y-Yes sir."

Djibril wrinkled his nose as more explosions boomed outside and rattled the _Ahura Mazda_. So many sacrifices, so many things this battle would cost him. The Immortals would be damaged, even if they came out of this battle seasoned by actual combat. His fleet would no doubt be diminished. He would still have to take Daedalus, still have to reestablish his authority, still have to retake control of the forces he was now destroying, all before ZAFT threw its own plan into action. He silently cursed Robert Meyers for putting him in his position. All of civilization stood naked before ZAFT, and here he was doing battle with the very army he had built to protect it.

"Sir," Stone said quietly, "we should begin withdrawing into the Debris Belt. We can lure the enemy after them and take them out ship-to-ship."

Djibril nodded silently.

—

The Green Frame Kai rattled as the one of the Euclids blasted by. Trojan flung the Green Frame to the side and lit up the beam sabers on the end of the rifle as the mobile armor arced around for another pass, beam cannons blazing.

"Dammit, these things won't sit still long enough!" he groaned, and then darted aside again as a second Euclid tore past. Up above, the Twilight Cortana took cover behind its beam shield as the other two Euclids pummeled it with beam fire.

"Emily killed two of these things at Terminal! We can do this!" wailed Lily.

The Green Frame rocked as a blast slammed into its beam shield and sent it reeling. "Yeah, well, that was Emily," Trojan grumbled. "We have to separate them before—"

Another wall of beam fire lanced across the battlefield—but this time from the other direction. Trojan blinked in surprise before he instinctively hurled the Green Frame to safety—and just as a shimmering column of red energy slammed head-on into one of the Euclids and sent it tumbling backward. Lily looked around the battlefield frantically for the source of the blast.

"Oh," she said, "holy shit."

Flanked by a small army of blue and white Windams and a handful of warships was a hulking Destroy Gundam, transforming into its mobile suit mode. Its eyes lit up with a flash and the beam cannons blazed to life to ruthlessly pound the four mobile armors and sent them reeling. And before the closest one could react, the Destroy rushed forward with a beam saber lighting up on its wrist and gutted the Euclid from nose to tail.

"They're, um, on our side, right?" Lily asked nervously.

"I think so," answered Trojan. "They said the Atlantic Fed fleet had a few of these too, but, uh," he shook his head, "what say we just, y'know, get out of the way all the same?"

As the surviving three Euclids struggled for distance against the advancing Destroy Gundam, the Green Frame and Cortana slipped past effortlessly and rocketed towards Djibril's fleet.

—

Shuddering under the combined fire of the Aurora and Celestial Justice Gundams, the Destroy backed away and let loose a storm of beams from its circumference cannons. The Aurora elegantly whirled its way through the blasts and slammed the Destroy in the face with a burst of plasma cannon fire. The positron reflector's shimmering barrier deflected the blow—but with the colossus distracted, it was child's play for the Justice to sweep in close and slash out the Destroy's chest cannons with a beam blade-assisted kick.

"Only one of these things," Viveka sneered. "I'm almost insulted."

Bitter memories of a time long ago when he'd fought a lone Destroy rushed back to Athrun's mind. "Don't let your guard down," he instructed. The Destroy unleashed a swarm of missiles from its backpack; Athrun backed away and fired a flurry of CIWS bullets into the missiles, blasting them apart. Viveka seized her opportunity to dash in close and plunge a beam saber into the Destroy's face, wipe out its entire head, and then saw off the mobile suit's right shoulder before she scrambled back for distance.

The wounded Destroy spewed another storm of beams from its remaining weapons, but this time Athrun easily negotiated a way through. The Destroy lit up the beam saber on its left wrist and swung it wildly towards the Justice; Athrun ducked beneath the blow, then rushed in close and severed its arm at the elbow.

"I'll draw its fire," he said, "you aim for the cockpit!"

The Justice backed away and launched the subflight lifter off its back. The unmanned machine arced off in one direction, the Justice's main body in another. The maimed Destroy split its fire after the two targets—

...and then it went silent as the Aurora Gundam darted in and slammed its beam saber straight through the Destroy's cockpit hatch. The mobile suit shuddered; Viveka backed away and watched it explode with a satisfied smile. Up above, the Justice reunited with its subflight lifter and dropped back down next to the Aurora.

"I never get tired of that," Viveka said with a sigh.

Athrun scanned the Justice's instruments. "Good, because there's five more of those things. Let's go."

—

The flaming hulk of a _Nelson_-class battleship finally gave out and disappeared in a thundering explosion. Three Resistance warships, a _Laurasia_-class frigate and two _Drake_-class destroyers, moved forward with an accompanying screen of mobile suits. Lord Djibril's fleet was faltering. It was only a matter of time.

Inside the humming Judgment Gundam, Rau Le Creuset grinned at his panicking opponents. The further south the battle went, the more the Extended piloting these things lost their cool.

The three remaining Calamity units lined up their guns and opened fire, and Rau went back on the defensive as he recalled his DRAGOONs for recharging. The Verde Busters added their fire to the mix and drove him upward, right into the jaws of the waiting Blu Duels. He snaked his way through the beam gun fire and lit up a beam saber in the Judgment's left hand, just as one of the Blu Duels descended on him with a blade of its own. The beams clashed; Rau flung the Blu Duel aside and then threw up his beam shield as beams from the Calamity units slammed home.

"I imagine these things cost you quite a pretty penny, Djibril," Rau grunted; the Judgment danced through the beams again. "But money is no substitute for real power!"

Eyes flashing, the Judgment lined itself up against the attacking mobile suits and let loose a storm of fire from the mounted guns. Most of the enemies made quick escapes; one of the Verde Busters was caught on a beam through the chest and vanished in a blaze. The Judgment backed away behind its beam shield as the remaining mobile suits intensified their fire.

"And you Extended," Rau sneered, "are no substitute for a Newtype!"

—

Emily shivered as the Gundam Eclipse quaked under the relentless blows of the Vishnu's beam guns. Between the positron cannon and the overwhelming firepower, this thing was like a miniature, much more maneuverable Destroy Gundam—and it was starting to rattle the three ex-Phantom Pain pilots she was temporarily calling her wing mates.

"Grey, Merau, pull back and bombard it from afar!" she instructed.

"But that reflector—" Merau started.

"It doesn't matter! Just knock her around! Erin, you're with me!"

The Vishnu answered with a wall of beam fire. "Don't think those little tricks will destroy me!" Crayt Markav roared, and the Vishnu took a furious swipe at the Eclipse with its beam blade, but caught only flickering afterimages. "I have power that _none_ of you can ever hope to have!"

Grey lined up a blast from the bazooka and pounded a shell into the Vishnu's face, sending the whole mobile armor reeling. "Oh, shut up!"

The Eclipse charged forward and its heat rod glowed an angry red, with the Gale Strike in close formation behind it. The Vishnu wheeled around on the two charging mobile suits; they broke formation just as a column of red beam fire lanced out towards them. Erin rocketed forward with a shout and brought her swords down onto the Vishnu's blazing beam blade—and then the Eclipse lunged up from behind the Gale Strike, heat rod glowing, and swept the razor-edged weapon down through the elbow of the Vishnu's left oversized arm.

Crayt snarled in fury and swatted the Eclipse aside with the remaining oversized arm. The Gale Strike darted away and the Eclipse made its own escape amid a swirl of afterimages; the Vishnu answered with a wall of beam fire, and two shining yellow beam swords sprang to life in the Vishnu's two conventionally sized arms.

"Pride is a sin," Crayt growled. "The worst of sins. The devil's own sin. God will have no mercy for you, that I promise you."

Emily curled her fingers around the Eclipse's controls. "I'd be more concerned with what's going on in this world if I were you, lady."

—

"_Gotcha!_"

With a triumphant grin, Sting Oakley wheeled the Fujin Gundam around and brought its knee straight up into the chest of one of the oncoming Verde Buster units. It staggered under the blow, then reeled again as Sting brought the other leg around to slam it in the back. And as the Verde Buster struggled to recover, he quickly blew it away with a beam rifle blast through the back and out the chest.

Up above, the Force Impulse Gundam backpedaled from the Calamity unit in front of it, then darted to the left as the Calamity fired a pulsing blast from its Scylla cannon. The heavier machine wheeled around on the nimble white and blue foe—

And then it vanished in a blaze as the Marduk Gundam fired its Callidus Mk II cannons and swept the Calamity off the battlefield, along with one of the Aile Strike Es and one of the Blu Duels. Auel snapped his attention upwards and backed away behind the Geschmeidig Panzer as the surviving Verde Buster combined its rifles overhead and slammed him back with a blast to the center.

"Oh, come on!" he snapped. "Hold still!"

The Verde Buster split its rifles apart, snapped the bayonets into position, and charged. Auel tensed and lit up the beam naginata, readying himself for a fight—

Instead, something plowed into the charging mobile suit from above and blew it apart. Auel blinked in surprise and looked up—and there, flanked by a squadron of Windams, a Euclid mobile armor came blasting into the fray. The Phantom Pain mobile suits broke their formation and scattered, but their blasts were useless against the Euclid's positron reflector.

"Oh yeah," Sting started. "They have those too."

"So, wait, they're on _our_ side for once?" Auel sputtered.

The Force Impulse pointed with its shield towards the dark shapes of Lord Djibril's fleet in the distance. "Quit chattering! We have work to do!"

"Oh, pull the stick out of your ass," Auel grumbled.

The Fujin and Marduk followed as the Impulse rocketed towards the enemy ships. Sting glanced over his shoulder again for once last look at the Euclid blasting away at the Phantom Pain mobile suits. That would certainly take some getting used to.

—

Shuddering under a relentless rain of saber strikes, the Destroy Gundam finally swept outwards with both its arms and the beam sabers blazing off its wrists. The Kali Gundam backflipped away, a saber of its own in hand, and Stella glowered at the monster before her. Riika and Courtney had moved ahead, so she would have to catch up with them—but first...

"You're just like Neo," she hissed. "You make your pilots think they're safe." The Destroy surged forward with a wave of firepower that slammed against the Kali's shield and drove it back. "You make them think you'll protect them."

The Destroy stabbed forward with its right arm; Stella darted to the side, then rushed in close and tore a long gash over the Destroy's chest, knocking out its chest cannons. The Destroy brought its arm around again, eyes flashing furiously; the Kali ducked down and severed the Destroy's left leg at the knee along the way, then roared backward to safety as the circumference cannons opened fire again.

"But Neo lied," Stella went on. The Destroy leaned forward and its Aufprall Dreizhen cannons came to life—and then the Kali plunged in between them and slashed them both in half. The Destroy lurched back, long enough for Stella to snap up the beam rifle and fire through the missile launchers. Two thundering explosions ripped apart the Destroy's backpack; the maimed mobile suit reeled as the blast ripped off its left arm at the shoulder, and it staggered forward with as much firepower as it had left. "And so do you!"

The Kali launched itself forward and plowed through the Destroy's desperate fire with its beam shield. The colossal mobile suit brought its right arm around, beam saber shining—but with a scream, Stella slid underneath the blade, then chopped the arm in two. As the Destroy stumbled backward, she lanced down towards the chest and stabbed her saber into the cockpit. The Destroy threw sparks and doubled forward as though in pain; she tore the saber up through the chest, then whipped around and pumped rounds from the beam rifle into the breach.

The Kali Gundam backed away behind its beam shield as the dying Destroy finally exploded, and Stella scowled down at the flames.

"You don't protect anyone."

And with that, the Kali turned and took off, back into battle.

—

Shinn Asuka let out his breath as he swung up his sword to block the Crusader Gundam's ferocious downward blow. The Zulfiqar rattled under the strain; he surged forward to fling the Alliance machine back, then darted upwards himself as the Vanguard opened fire. And then the Artemis was upon him with a beam saber; the Zulfiqar slammed its foot into the Artemis's torso and knocked it back, but before Shinn could follow up on the strike, the Crusader was back in his face with another heavy sword swing.

"You can't be serious," he breathed—and the Crusader surged forward and drove the Zulfiqar into another furious swordfight.

"Nothing else on this battlefield matters," Sven snarled. "Not Djibril. Not Meyers. Not ZAFT. Your battle is with me."

"Not even your wing mates?" Shinn shot back; the Zulfiqar shook as the Crusader brought down its sword again. Shinn yanked back the controls to dodge another blow and then snaked his way around beam fire from the Vanguard. The Artemis lunged in behind him, beam saber ready; he smacked the blade aside and dove out of harm's way as the Crusader gave chase with a furious sword slash. The Vanguard moved in for another salvo behind the Artemis and Shinn narrowed his eyes—

An instant later, the Crusader surged forward again and Shinn jammed his sword up to deflect its blow—and then he shoved the Crusader aside and fired a quick blast from his long-range cannon, straight at the Artemis. Mudie yelped in surprise—and then Shams lunged into the way to shoulder the Artemis aside. The blast seared by the Vanguard and ripped off most of its left side; the right-hand cannon melted under the heat and sent the rest of the mobile suit spiraling away, spewing smoke.

"_Shams!_" Mudie screamed—and then turned back towards the Zulfiqar in rage. "You _bastard_—"

And then the Zulfiqar blasted past the Crusader and with a shriek of twisting metal, it brought its sword down onto the Artemis, ripping off its head, its right arm, its left leg, and its entire backpack. He slammed the mobile suit's sparking remains aside with a heavy kick, then whipped around and swung his sword upward, just in time to deflect the Crusader's attack.

"I guess that answers that," Shinn muttered.

"One of us is going to die today, Asuka," Sven growled, "and I no longer care who."

Shinn scowled right back. "I can tell."

The Crusader flung the Zulfiqar back with its sword and fired its Agni Kai cannon; Shinn whirled around the blast with a cloud of afterimages and the two Gundams charged at each other again.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Ivan Danilov tightened his grip on the armrests of his seat as the _Charlemagne_ shook from a missile detonation entirely too close to the hull. Djibril's fleet was pulling back into the Debris Belt. Djibril might get away, and his fleet would gain the upper hand against the bulky and unwieldy formations attacking them. But the weapons were ready and somewhere in that fleet was Djibril's flagship.

Up ahead, a _Drake_-class destroyer emerged from behind a wrecked warship hulk—but the Gottfrieds came to life immediately and tore it to shreds. Another ship emerged from the other side and managed to pelt the _Charlemagne_'s vast hull with Vulcan rounds, before the Gottfrieds turned on it too and ripped it in half. Danilov frowned as the _Charlemagne_ plowed ahead, with Djibril's ranks scattering before it and the ship's own mobile suits joining the Resistance's forces in between the vessels. Djibril would not get away this time.

"The _Alexandria_ is calling in, sir," the comm officer spoke up. "They're sending us four more ships and another five squadrons of mobile suits. They want us to lead a breakthrough."

"Then lead we will," Danilov said. "Signal to Harrison's team to tighten their formation around the ship. We will break through the center, and find Lord Djibril." He furrowed his brow. They would have to—before that rising feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach got any worse. "All hands, all ahead, _full!_"

—

"This world is broken!" shrieked Crayt Markav as her sputtering Vishnu, sparks flying from its maimed left arm, poured beam fire after its four nimble adversaries. Emily glowered down at the bulky mobile armor as she wove her way between the beams and left a brilliant streak of afterimages in her wake. "And you, little Zero-One, _you_ are the ultimate sin!" The Vishnu swung its remaining large arm and its blazing golden beam saber towards the Eclipse; Emily swung back with her own beam sword to stop it cold, then darted away before the Vishnu could fire again. "There is only one God in this world and He does not—"

"Oh, _get off it already!_" Grey shouted—and then the Vishnu lurched as a bazooka round slammed into the Vishnu from the side. "I'm pretty sure your God wasn't cool with what you did to Volgograd either, you crazy bitch!" The mobile armor whirled around and fired back—but that left the Gale Strike free to dive in and slice off the Vishnu's other large arm between the wrist and elbow, then rocket away before it could retaliate.

"How dare you arrogant little worms try to stop me!" Crayt snarled, and backed away behind a wall of beam fire. "I am here on a far higher mission than any of you can imagine!" The Vishnu shuddered as the Hail Buster pounded it with another beam cannon blast; it fired back with its two Lohengrin cannons and forced the Alliance Gundams apart. "You fools can never defeat God's will!"

The Vishnu lined its guns up to fire again—but then it lurched back as the Eclipse darted in out of nowhere and ripped the cannons out of its chest with a backhanded sword stroke. It brought both its arms around, yellow beam swords blazing to life—but the Eclipse merely jetted backward and then sliced them both off at the elbows.

"We're not up against God," Emily shot back, "we're up against you."

Crayt's face twisted in fury. "You truly think you can escape the Lord, Zero-One?! You never will! You will be hunted by—"

She went silent and her image vanished from the screens as a yellow beam plowed through the Vishnu's chest. Emily flung her Gundam backwards as the stricken mobile armor exploded and glanced up in surprise at the Hail Buster, its beam cannon still extended.

"I was getting sick of her fucking sermons," Merau said with a shrug.

"W-We really can't go back now," Erin murmured.

"Oh, why in the hell would we _want_ to?" groaned Grey.

Emily breathed a sigh as she sat back in the Eclipse's cockpit seat and checked the sensors. That had been an obnoxious distraction, but in the meantime, the battle seemed to be going well enough. Djibril's fleet was falling back, the Resistance and Alliance forces were pressing forward, she could still feel her friends out there in the battlefield—

But there was something else too, and she snapped her attention towards the Moon. Something else—so many other lives—how did they get out there—

"_Everyone, move!_" she screamed, and fired the thrusters.

And then a vast column of light lanced out from the mass of approaching human presences. It swept through the battlefield, through the warring fleets. Dozens of ships and hundreds of mobile suits writhed and disintegrated in the blast; Emily's eyes went wide and her face went white as thousands of lives blew away like dust. She turned her gaze back towards the knot of hatred and fury crawling ever closer to the battlefield. It had always been there at around Lagrange Point 5, but now it burned hotter with the rippling current of anticipation underneath it all. The Eclipse's sensors caught sight of something—an asteroid, surrounded by rings—and Emily's jaw dropped.

"Wh-what the hell was that?!" Grey exclaimed. "That wasn't the Requiem—"

"It got ships from both sides," Merau said. "It was something else."

Emily stared ahead in horror. "It...it's them."

"For generations," boomed the voice of Valentine Sunogachi, "you Naturals have threatened us Coordinators with annihilation." Emily tore her eyes from the approaching fleet and put them on the auxiliary screen, where the Marshal of ZAFT sat in a darkened control room, much different and much smaller-looking than the one that was evidently on Messiah. "When we were the slaves of your earthly nations, you forced us to rely on you for food and crushed underfoot our pleas for independence and justice. When we broke our chains and claimed our rightful freedom, you threatened us with death for our people and destruction of our habitats. When we defended ourselves, you pointed nuclear weapons at us and tried to extinguish us from civilization. When someone punished you for your sins, you returned them to us a hundredfold. When you had defeated us on Earth, you destroyed our nation in space. And when you had annihilated our homeland and our people, you drove us, the survivors, into exile."

"What are they doing...?" Erin murmured.

"We clawed against the uncaring void of space and the harsh surface of Mars for our very survival," Valentine said, "and now we have returned, to bring justice to this world. You have not tasted the bitter swill of persecution and destruction. You have not known what it is to have your civilization erased in the blink of an eye. You have not known what true suffering means. But starting today," she put on a sinister smile, "you will."

"Oh my God," Grey started. "Look at their fleet. Maximum magnification."

Emily zoomed in the image and felt her blood freeze in her veins.

"Let us mark this day for remembrance," Valentine said with a grin. "For today is the day your world comes to an end."

The words echoed everywhere, but Emily kept her eyes fixed in horror at Messiah, at the approaching ZAFT fleet—and at the terrifying shape of the ZAKU Goliath.

—

To be continued...


	47. Phase 47: Unstoppable

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 47 - Unstoppable

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt**

The bridge was silent as all eyes were riveted to the auxiliary screen and the terrifying image of the crimson monster at the center of ZAFT's fleet. Surrounded by a translucent blue barrier, flanked by mobile suits and warships, followed by the vast shadow of Messiah, driving towards the Earth...

Meyrin Hawke's mind went back to Copernicus. They had underestimated the depths of ZAFT's desire for revenge and its accompanying capacity for cruelty once before, and ten million people's lives had been the price of that mistake. But not this time.

Copland's image appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Did you just see—"

"I did," she answered. "Are we abandoning our battle with Djibril?"

"Of course," spluttered Copland. "I'm redirecting the fleet—or, well, what's left of it. There's been no order from the Atlantic Fed, but—"

"We don't have time for them," she said. "I'm going ahead with whatever we can spare."

Copland smiled grimly. "Then we'll be right behind you."

Meyrin nodded and the screen went dark. "Roxy," she said quietly, "prepare for a full-spectrum broadcast. Everyone who's listening."

"Wha—even to the enemy ships?" Roxy sputtered.

"Ships, mobile suits, everything. Just do it."

Roxy reluctantly set to work at her console, and a few moments later Meyrin lifted the intercom to her lips.

"This is Captain Hawke of the battleship _Minerva,_" she said, and prayed that every ounce of authority Talia had ever possessed might somehow be hers, for just a moment. "We've just heard the Marshal of ZAFT threaten the Earth with annihilation. I was at Copernicus. I know that she is not bluffing. So I request that every unit that can hear me, whichever side you're on, come with me. Our target is ZAFT."

She clicked off the intercom—and then Burt gasped in surprise. "Captain, a heat signature is rising in the cannon that thing is carrying!"

"Malik, prepare for evasive action," Meyrin said, and clenched her fists over the armrests. Here she was, staring another atrocity in the face—but this time it would have to go through the _Minerva_ first.

—

**Earth Alliance **_**Girty Lue**_**-class battleship **_**Ahura Mazda**_

An opportunity. It was an opportunity. And it was already slipping away.

Lord Djibril leapt to his feet and seized the intercom from the captain's hand. "All units, this is Lord Djibril, President of the Earth Alliance!" he barked. "I am ordering you to target and destroy the ZAFT fleet immediately!"

He looked back up towards the approaching fleet. They had moved so quickly, and where had they gotten all those ships? He had spent months chipping away their forces, but here, it looked as though he hadn't made a dent.

And there was the _Minerva_, with that ship's captain—a teenage girl, a _teenage girl_ that had spent years vexing him so—rallying everyone to the position that was rightly his own. Everything was coming down at once, but as long as he could assume leadership here, take over the effort to stop ZAFT, finally scrape together a victory, then—

"Sir, the heat signature is building up!" one of the bridge crew cried.

"What the hell are they doing?!" snapped Admiral Stone.

Djibril looked up—and then, far ahead, the ZAKU Goliath raised the massive cannon in its right hand...and everything went white.

—

**The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

No one spoke as the smoke cleared on the main screens. That giant red ZAFT weapon had fired a huge beam straight through the Alliance, Resistance, and Phantom Pain fleets; straight through the battlefield; and into the Earth. They had hit only the ocean—_this _time.

Robert Meyers stared in disbelief at the screen. MacIntyre painfully got to his feet as the Atlantic Federation President stumbled over to the railing.

"They...they're shooting at us," he said. "What happened to my emissary?"

"I think that's obvious," MacIntyre said. "Meyers. The fleet is awaiting its orders. We have to give up on Djibril and deal with ZAFT. This gamble has failed."

Meyers was silent. "How...did this happen?" He blew out his breath through his nose. "Well. What's the condition of our fleet?"

"Twenty percent losses, sir," one of the soldiers reported.

"And the other fleets?"

"The Resistance has lost fifteen percent; the other nations have lost up to fifty percent. The South African fleet—"

"Whatever," Meyers said with a wave of his hand. "Inform Admiral Dougherty to retreat immediately."

MacIntyre's eyes went wide in horror. "_Retreat?!_ Are you mad?!"

"We'll let the other fleets wear down the ZAFT forces," Meyers said, a twitch developing in his right eye, "and pounce on them at their moment of weakness."

"But then our line will collapse!" MacIntyre protested. "They'll break through before our maneuvers will be complete, and then they'll reach Earth!"

"They will not be so unreasonable!" Meyers shot back. "They are bluffing!"

"They weren't bluffing at Copernicus! You'll leave the whole Earth open—"

Meyers turned away with a sneer. "Then so be it. Give Admiral Dougherty his orders. The ones who survive will understand—"

A gunshot rang out, the room went silent—and Meyers staggered forward and slumped to the floor with a bloody hole in his back. Behind him, a smoking pistol in her hands, Seri Minamoto fell to her knees. The bodyguards around the room reached for their weapons—but then the chatter of automatic weapons filled the control room, the bodyguards fell dead, and the Alliance Army soldiers shouldered their weapons and looked meaningfully towards the admiral.

One of the Army officers nearest to MacIntyre looked around carefully at the carnage, and then back at the unruffled Grand Admiral. "Is this a _coup d'etat_?" he asked.

"Call it what you like," the admiral said.

"Then I'll call it treason."

MacIntyre fixed the man with a hard look. "Feel free to punish me, major."

The major stood still for a moment, eyes darting back and forth between MacIntyre and Meyers' bloody corpse—and then turned towards the rest of the room. "For the duration of this battle, we are under Admiral MacIntyre's command," he announced, and then turned back to the admiral, the picture of military precision. "Admiral, your orders...?"

MacIntyre smiled imperceptibly beneath his beard and stepped forward. "All units are to disengage from their present attacks and direct all attention towards ZAFT. They are the threat to our world that we all cherish, no matter which side we're on. They are our enemy. And they must be stopped."

—

"That thing has to be way bigger than a Destroy," Emily murmured as the Gundam Eclipse roared into battle towards the vast ZAFT fleet. "And it has that shield..."

Her mind raced for tactics to deal with that thing. Maybe what worked against a Destroy would work on that monster, but how could she know? What if it had an entirely different defensive system? It was so much bigger; it had to have more weapons. With one blast it had blown a gaping hole in the until recently warring fleets. And it had the entire ZAFT force escorting it to Earth.

Emily's blood went cold at that thought. Escorting it to Earth...that meant they wanted to land and turn all that destructive power on the Earth itself. So many people—

Her instinct raced up her spine and she jammed the Eclipse's controls back—just in time to avoid two blazing red beam blasts from above. She swung up the Dragon's Fire and squeezed off a shot, but more beams rained down on her and forced her on the defensive behind her beam shield. She snapped her attention up towards the source, already honing in on those two familiar presences.

"I shouldn't be surprised that _you_ two would be here to stop me."

Up above, beam wings shimmering against the blaze of battle, floated two Destiny Impulse Gundams. One was in red and white, the other in blue and white—and the red one had two towering anti-ship swords drawn, and it pointed them both combatively at the Eclipse.

"You've finally run out of places to hide, Angel of Death!" cackled Varder Ehrmacht. Emily frowned at his crazed appearance: the bulging eyes, the twitching grin, the cloud of madness surrounding his presence... "I am not letting you get away this time, bitch!"

She scowled back. "Still acting like I'm your rival or something, huh?"

"_Shut your goddamn mouth!_" Varder roared, his eye twitching. "You have no idea what you've cost me, you sanctimonious little whore! And today I'm going to make you pay for _all of it!_"

The red Destiny Impulse's eyes lit up with a furious flash and the Gundam rocketed forward. Emily yanked back the controls and exchanged the Dragon's Fire for her shining green beam sword, and brought down the blade just as the red Destiny Impulse's swords came crashing down.

The blue Destiny Impulse lunged up above the red one and fired off a blast from the cannons on its back that sent the Eclipse diving out of harm's way. "And you've cost _me_ quite a bit too," snarled Lilith Ramsi as the two Impulses whirled around on their prey.

"I cost you nothing you hadn't already lost," Emily shot back with a scowl.

"Oh no, we had quite the career before us, before _you_ came along," snarled Varder. "And now," the red Destiny Impulse hefted its swords, "it's time to take that all back!"

—

"Alright, so this is some pretty bad shit," Grey said with a groan, "but if we could take down Markav, we can handle that thing."

Merau and Erin both gave him an incredulous look. "That thing is, like, ten times the size of Markav's mobile armor," Merau said.

"Well, we're just gonna have to be optimistic," Grey offered. "You heard all those orders going out. It doesn't even matter who's on whose side anymore. All we have to do is stop ZAFT," he glowered ahead at the attacking ZAFT fleet and the crimson colossus at their center, "and that's a nice simple order."

"And how are we getting past that beam shield thing?" Merau asked.

"We'll think of something. If Erin could pierce the positron reflector with the Gale Strike's swords—"

Erin's eyes went wide. "_Watch out!_"

The three Gundams rocketed apart just as a furious storm of beam fire lanced through the space between them. Grey frantically scanned the black skies for a sign of their attacker. Merau pointed up.

"Wha-what the hell is _that?!_"

Above them floated a white and black Gundam with elegant blue wings and eyes shining bright and gold. It lowered itself down before them and Grey cringed at the sight of shimmering sapphire wings of light stretching off its back. It regarded them impassively as Grey searched his memory for where he'd seen this mobile suit before.

"I-It's that white Gundam," Erin breathed, "from Sagan City..."

The Vega Freedom Gundam launched its DRAGOONs.

—

The Zulfiqar Gundam rattled as the Crusader's sword came down with a crash and the afterimages flickered around the two combatants. Inside the Zulfiqar, Shinn cringed at the sight of his glowering opponent.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Undaunted, the Crusader surged forward and flung the Zulfiqar back with its sword. "I am not letting you go," Sven snarled, and the Crusader charged after its opponent with another furious slash.

"So you'd rather fight me than try to stop that thing ZAFT is sending?" Shinn sputtered. "How could this possibly be more important?!"

The Crusader slammed the Zulfiqar back with another hard sword hit. "You know far too much about me to ever be let go," Sven said. The sparks flashed between the two Gundams as the Crusader pressed its blade down onto the Zulfiqar's sword. "And those things you know about me are weaknesses that can be exploited."

Shinn scowled back. "What, that you're not _really_ a complete monster, you just pretend you're one?"

"No!" Sven flung the Zulfiqar back with a wordless shout. "You know that I _hate_ what I am, and there's nothing I can do about it! And as long as you live, you'll keep reminding me of that and I'll never be free of it!" The Crusader surged forward with another swing.

"The hell is your problem?!" Shinn shot back. "I think there's more important things going on than your fucking issues, y'know!"

The Crusader's eyes flashed as it pointed its sword combatively at the Zulfiqar. "Then in that case, feel free to kill me," Sven said. "Because that's the only way you'll get away from me."

Shinn ground his teeth in frustration; the Zulfiqar hefted its sword and charged.

—

"How many of these fucking things _are_ there?!" wailed Viveka von Oldendorf as the Aurora Gundam shook. Up ahead, a wall of ZAFT mobile suits poured a storm of firepower into the two charging Gundams. Athrun finally backed away with a snarl behind the beam shields, and together the two mobile suits ducked behind a piece of wreckage and made their escape.

"There aren't enough humans in there," Athrun said quietly.

Viveka blinked. "What do you mean?"

"There's more mobile suits back there than there are humans," he explained. "They must have found some way to remotely control machines or something."

Viveka looked back at the approaching army—and then something in the back of her mind clicked and she blanched. "The Stargazer..."

"What?"

"It's something Emily mentioned once. The Stargazer was a deep space exploration machine. It had a self-learning AI system to control it while it was beyond human contact."

"Then..." Athrun looked back at the ZAFT mobile suits. "Well, then that's good news and bad."

"It is?"

"Good news is you can outsmart an AI." He frowned. "Bad news is it might not matter."

Viveka tightened her fists around the Aurora's controls. "I can outsmart some goddamn robot."

"I didn't say you couldn't," Athrun said, "but that's a lot of robots." He shook his head solemnly. "And we're going to need a lot more reinforcements of our own if we're going to stop them." The Celestial Justice edged forward. "So, let's go find some friends."

—

With a resounding crash, the Fujin Gundam's gunbarrels returned to their racks. Sting Oakley glanced nervously around the battlefield, where Aoma's fleet was falling back before the vast onslaught of the ZAFT forces. There were hundreds of them, and Athrun had just called in with his theory that some of them were controlled by artificial intelligences culled from the DSSD's old Stargazer unit.

Well, fine, let the robot revolution begin, he could take them. But Aoma's fleet was still being driven inexorably back as ZAFT battered its way through her lines.

The Force Impulse moved forward and Aoma leaned forward, frustration rippling across her face. "Move the _Aldebaran_ back, they can't do any good anymore," she snapped. "Dammit, where did they all come from...?"

"Heads up!" Auel shouted, and flung the Marduk Gundam into the path of a storm of beam fire and railgun shells. The beams went flying wide of their intended target as the Geschmeidig Panzer system came to life, but the railgun shells slammed home and drove the Marduk back behind a cloud of smoke. Sting leapt forward and fired back with the missile tubes; up ahead, the projectiles found their mark on three of the attackers, blowing them to pieces, but the rest pressed forward and drove the Gundams back regardless of their comrades' fates.

"Jesus, these guys are intense," Sting grunted as the Fujin rattled. "We're gonna need some help here!"

"Ali, get the ships in position and open fire!" Aoma cried. On the screen, Ali stared back grimly.

"We'd be risking—"

"I don't care," Aoma cut him off, "we have to stop them from reaching Earth." She glowered back up at the titanic ZAKU Goliath, still in the distance. "They weren't bluffing at Copernicus. They aren't bluffing here."

Ali frowned. "Then I'd advise you to get out of the way."

The Gundams darted upwards as Aoma's warships edged forward and opened fire. Up ahead, some of the ZAFT mobile suits were blown away in the first barrage—but the rest scattered their formation to escape the blasts and returned the fire in spades. One of the _Drake_-class destroyers lurched as a handful of missiles struck its prow.

"Dammit, there's too many," Aoma hissed. "Fall back! Fighting retreat!" The ZAFT mobile suits moved forward, guns leveled—

And then another wall of fire slammed into them from up above. Sting snapped his attention up overhead and gasped in disbelief as a squadron of Resistance mobile suits lanced down onto the advancing ZAFT units, guns blazing. And at their head was a blue ZAKU Phantom, the Proto Chaos, and—

"Is that _Stella?_" sputtered Auel.

"Move, Auel!" Sting shouted, and the Fujin quickly shoved the Marduk back with a hard kick to the chest. The two Gundams rocketed apart as yet another wave of beam fire sliced through the space between them—and Sting cringed at the sight of three more approaching enemies, these ones with the elegant armor styling and silver colors of the VaROZ units that had trashed his poor Chaos.

Auel licked his lips. "They want a rematch, huh?"

The Gundams blasted apart again as the VaROZ units went on the attack.

—

Rau Le Creuset could not decide what pleased him most: Valentine's lack of subtlety, Emily's growing impatience, or Athrun's quick deduction of just what was going on here. They just made everything easy for him.

The Judgment Gundam stood atop the scorched hulk of a _Drake_-class destroyer and turned its eyes towards the approaching army of ZAFT mobile suits. There were more mobile suits than there were humans in that crowd, as Athrun had discovered, but they were just small change. The real prize was at the center of that formation. The ZAKU Goliath had the power to lay low entire nations. It was worth dozens of Destroy Gundams. It was the closest thing humankind had yet come to creating a god—and not the loving and forgiving modern gods. This was an old god, a god who demanded sacrifice—and a god who had the means to take it.

Ahead, the ZAFT mobile suits honed in on his position and began to fire. The Judgment vaulted off its perch and rocketed into the fray, and its DRAGOONs lifted off with a flash of exhaust. The Gundam danced amid the blasts and the DRAGOONs spewed back blazing beam bolts; Rau smiled as a few of the enemy mobile suits exploded under the onslaught.

All that mattered was to get himself and Emily near enough to the ZAKU Goliath to make a difference. Human presences would be easy enough to find inside that thing. And he could feel the familiar pressure of Unit Zero-Two somewhere in that fleet as well. After she fought Emily, it would be child's play to convince the Angel of Death to take up a scythe that truly fitted her dreadful mission.

The ZAFT mobile suits broke formation and scattered from the Judgment's vicious DRAGOONs. Rau smirked and recalled the weapons with a crash as he rocketed through the gap in the enemy lines. The stage was almost set, and once again, the world already had one foot through the door.

—

Up ahead, yet another Windam exploded as a ZAFT ZAKU Warrior speared it on a beam rifle blast. It rushed forward—until the Green Frame Kai lunged out of hiding behind a wrecked warship and slashed it in half with its custom rifle. Trojan whipped around and fired back at the dying ZAKU's comrades, but the vast cluster of mobile suits turned their guns towards him and forced him to flee behind his beam shield.

"Everything was going so well until these guys showed up," he grunted.

The Twilight Cortana burst out of hiding behind another warship wreck and charged headlong towards the first squadron of ZAFT mobile suits. The DRAGOONs lifted off with a flash and pelted the incoming machines with beam fire; a GINN and a GuAIZ R exploded, but the rest moved forward, and the squad of ZAKUs at their head backed away and tightened their formation.

"You aren't going anywhere!" Lily screamed, and turned the DRAGOONs on them—but then one of the surviving GINNs peppered the Cortana with machinegun rounds. Lily ground her teeth in frustration and backed away—then darted forward, afterimages flickering around the Cortana, and slammed her left-hand palm cannon into the GINN's chest and blasted clear through. She flung the sparking mobile suit away, but the rest had already moved into position, and a wall of beam fire drove back the Cortana and its DRAGOONs.

"These guys figured us out pretty quickly," Trojan muttered, and the Green Frame dropped in to cover the Cortana with its beam shield as the red Gundam recalled its DRAGOONs. "We're gonna need a new strategy here."

"Like what?!"

A squad of Gunner ZAKUs leveled off their cannons and fired. The two Gundams rocketed apart and began to back away. "They've got the upper hand now," Trojan said. "We need to find some allies, tie them up so we can break through."

"And do what?" Lily asked.

Trojan spared a quick glance towards the crimson colossus at the fleet's center. "Wing it, I guess."

Lily frowned. "That's the worst plan I've ever heard."

The Green Frame and Cortana pulled back behind their beam shields as the ZAFT mobile suits fired again.

—

It was almost comforting, really. There had been so many ways this plan could have gone wrong that Valentine Sunogachi had begun to worry that the universe would cut her short just on the cusp of her goal.

But it was too late now. Her enemies were in chaos and her own troops were on the march. And even from this range, the ZAKU Goliath could bring hell down onto the Earth.

"Marshal," one of the soldiers spoke up, "the Armageddon cannon is fully charged."

"Wonderful," Valentine said, and leaned forward to study the strategic map before her. "Well, gentlemen, I suppose it's only fair that we show our Natural friends the same lack of discrimination that they showed us. Pick a city at random, and let's light it up."

The crosshairs fell over the city of Dakar. Valentine smirked. Dakar, the capital of Africa, to the extent that a place like Africa could be said to have a capital city. But they wouldn't for long—

"Marshal, heat signature ahead," the sensor officer piped up. Valentine frowned at the sight of nothing short of an entire Destroy Gundam and a squadron of Windams closing in from the front. The Destroy opened fire with its full arsenal, but nothing could pierce the Goliath's translucent beam shield.

Valentine sat back with a smirk. "Fire."

The Goliath raised its massive "Armageddon" cannon and shuddered as a vast golden column of light erupted from the barrel. The Windams promptly disappeared in the blast; the Destroy twisted and writhed as its positron reflector struggled to hold out against the overwhelming energy, but sparks danced around the massive mobile suit's joints—and an instant later, the positron reflector gave way and it too vanished in the light. The enormous beam lanced across the battlefield, swept through a handful of Alliance-built warships, and plunged straight into the Earth. And even from far away, Valentine could feel the Goliath's power burn away thousands of people and bore a massive crater into what had once been a teeming city.

_Just as we predicted._

"Armageddon discharge complete," the weapons officer announced. "Recharge cycle commencing now."

"Mark our next set of targets," Valentine ordered. "Pilot, keep us on course, maximum speed. We stop for nothing."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"The Phantom Pain fleet is definitely collapsing," Danilov said, pausing only as something exploded entirely too close to the _Charlemagne_ and shook the entire ship. "My hunch is that the command staff was killed during one of the blasts from that giant red thing. I can't confirm it, but hunches are all I've got to work with."

On the auxiliary screen, Joseph Copland nodded solemnly. His image was momentarily broken by static as something rattled the _Alexandria_. "We intercepted some transmissions, said something about the flagship going down. But we'll have to confirm that later."

"In that case," Danilov said, "I make no guarantees that this will work, but I'm going to try to rally the Phantom Pain survivors to our side." He gestured out the bridge windows, where the ZAKU Goliath was plowing through a squadron of Alliance warships on its inexorable way to Earth. "We need all the help we can get."

"And we can't let up, not even for a moment," Copland agreed. "So we'll do this. I want you to gather up whatever forces you can and attack the ZAFT fleet, including Messiah and that giant carrier they seem to be using as a flagship. Everyone else will go with the _Minerva_ and attack that red machine. With any luck we'll split up the red machine and the troops guarding it."

Danilov blinked. "The _Minerva_? On their own?"

Copland smiled grimly. "This is what they do, captain."

"Be big damn heroes?"

"Exactly."

The _Charlemagne_'s captain sank back into his seat. "We're going to need some assistance breaking through the beam shield on that fortress. Lord Djibril built all kinds of weapons to do that, but they're not much good to us now..."

"Then do whatever you can and take whatever you need," Copland said. "We don't have time for the petty stuff. The entire world is in the balance." His expression darkened. "We are all imperfect, and none more so than I. But our battle is against an absolute evil."

Danilov looked back out the bridge windows, towards the armies of ZAFT.

_But at least this time I'm on the right side..._

—

Emily cringed as the Gundam Eclipse quaked under an unrelenting series of sword blows from the red Destiny Impulse. The blue unit swept in from behind with its own swords drawn; Emily darted away from Varder, backflipped over Lilith, then stormed down towards the two Gundams. Varder's Impulse shouldered aside Lilith's unit and swung back at full force with its swords, and Emily winced as the impact rattled her bones.

"I had a glorious career ahead of me in ZAFT, you know!" Varder roared. "I was appointed to FAITH, given control of an entire special forces unit, had a nickname for myself and the Order of the Nebula for my actions at Solomon's Sword!" The Impulse flung the Eclipse back and opened fire with its long-range cannons; Emily lunged away from the blasts amid a cloud of afterimages and fixed her attention on the smoldering human presence before her. "Kira Yamato himself entrusted me with important weapons and missions!" The Impulse rocketed in close again for another string of sword strikes. "_And look what you did to all that!_"

Emily scowled and seized her chance; she rushed forward as the Impulse brought its sword up, and forced it to jam its left-hand sword into the way to stop her beam sword blow. The blue Destiny Impulse lunged up from behind its red counterpart and opened fire; the blasts slammed against the Eclipse's beam shield and drove it back.

"You keep bouncing around like you think you matter to me," Emily shot back.

"Oh, and I don't?!" Varder snarled, and the red Destiny Impulse closed in again. "Because that's just the problem, isn't it?!" The red Gundam slammed its swords down again and again. "I'm humiliated time and time again by a fucking _little girl!_"

The Eclipse staggered back under a hard blow from the red Impulse's swords. "Oh, so that's what the problem's been all this time," she grumbled.

"Varder, get a hold of yourself!" Lilith cried, but the red Destiny Impulse blasted forward and pummeled the Eclipse's beam shield with long-range cannon blasts. Emily fixed her charging opponent with a glare as the red Gundam closed in.

—

With a thundering explosion, a _Nelson_-class cruiser from the Republic of East Asia buckled under the relentless fire from a swarm of ZAFT mobile suits and warships. Athrun grimaced at the sight of the explosion, and the feeling of all those lives disappearing. The Resistance and the Earth Alliance were finally getting along, and they were all getting wiped out anyway.

"Okay, hero boy, what do we do?" Viveka asked, as the Aurora backed away behind its beam shield. Up ahead, the ZAFT mobile suits began to cautiously press their advance. The Aurora lunged up over a salvo of beam fire and returned it with the plasma cannons, and down below, two of the ZAFT mobile suits exploded—but the rest intensified their fire and sent the red Gundam scrambling for cover.

"The whole fleet is in chaos," Athrun said. "We have to mount a sustained attack."

"Great, General Rommel, so how are we going to _do_ it?"

The Celestial Justice lunged forward into the ranks of a charging squad of ZAFT ZAKUs and the older mobile suits trailing after it. Machinegun bullets ricocheted off the Phase Shift armor as the Justice's claws snapped to life and ripped two of the ZAKUs apart. The two survivors backed away, covered by the automated mobile suits behind them; Athrun plowed through their fire, but two GuAIZ Rs lined up above to slam him back with a volley of railgun shells. One of the ZAKUs, sporting a Slash Wizard, charged forward with its beam axe raised—

And then a beam lanced down and speared it through the chest. With an angry shout, Viveka poured fire from the Aurora's plasma cannons into the attackers and destroyed the remaining ZAKU—but the automated mobile suits concentrated their fire on the Aurora and sent Viveka staggering back. Athrun lunged forward and ripped two of the mobile suits apart with the claws, but the rest backed away behind a protective screen of fire.

"Goddammit," he grunted, "this is getting us nowhere!" He spared a quick glance towards the vast ZAKU Goliath, still on course for Earth. "And all while that thing is still on the loose..."

—

Stella Loussier cringed as the Kali Gundam reeled under a hard kick to the chest from one of the VaROZ units. The pilot let out a triumphant laugh.

"You see just how useless you are?!" screamed the brown-haired girl with a curved scar over one eye.

The VaROZ pulled back its beam saber and Stella tensed, waiting to deflect it—but then a flurry of beam shots from above drove the silver mobile suit back. The girl snapped her eyes upward, just in time for Riika's blue ZAKU Phantom to barrel into the battle with a hard crash from one of its spiked shields.

"How can you _do_ this?!" Riika shouted; the VaROZ backed away as the ZAKU showered it with beam fire. "You're going to kill everyone on Earth with that thing!"

"It's only fair!" the girl shrieked back, and the VaROZ lined up its rifle to open fire again—and this time, a wall of fire joined it from behind as the swarms of ZAFT mobile suits moved in. Stella charged forward after the VaROZ, only to be halted by a hurricane of machinegun bullets and railgun shells that sent the Kali reeling back.

Up above, the Fujin and its gunbarrels backed away behind the Marduk's Geschmeidig Panzer system and the Proto Chaos rocketed after them, both pursued by the other two VaROZs. Sting lunged out of hiding and fired back with his beam rifle; a rain of beams from the other ZAFT troops forced him back.

"There's no opening!" Auel yelled. "I can't—"

"_Too late!_" screamed a man's voice, and one of the VaROZ units plunged down towards the Marduk with a beam saber held high—

And then it staggered off course as the Proto Chaos slammed straight into it. The gunbarrels flashed as they warded off the three VaROZ units with relentless blasts.

"_Go!_" roared Courtney. "Pull back, now! I'll cover you!"

"Pull back?!" Sting sputtered. "But—"

"The Resistance is gearing up for a counterattack," Courtney said, his image broken for a moment as the Proto Chaos took a glancing hit to the side from a beam rifle shot. "You're needed elsewhere. Now get the hell out of here."

"But you'll die!" Stella wailed.

Courtney turned his eyes towards the three VaROZ units as they fell into formation. "Then I'll do so on _my_ terms!"

The Proto Chaos swung up with its gunbarrels streaking in ahead of it. The ZAFT mobile suits intensified their fire on the gunbarrels as they darted around the white mobile armor; Courtney charged forward, lit up the beam claws, and blasted into the three VaROZ units. They darted apart just before the mobile armor could hit them, and one of them speared the Proto Chaos on a beam rifle shot as it passed.

"_COURTNEY!_" Riika screamed—and the Proto Chaos exploded.

Sting seized Riika's ZAKU by the arm and rocketed away, the Marduk and Kali right behind him—and tried to squeeze the tears out of his eyes.

"He...he did it," Auel said quietly.

"Come on!" Sting barked. "We've got a fucking war to win!"

—

The Green Frame Kai ducked beneath a ZAKU's furious beam rifle blast and expertly chopped it in two with the custom rifle's beam sabers. Trojan backed away as his defeated foe exploded—but the destroyed machine was simply replaced by a wall of beams, missiles, and machinegun rounds, driving him back behind his beam shield.

"_Richelieu_ is going down!" someone's voice shouted—and off to the right, an _Agamemnon_-class carrier finally snapped in two and exploded, and a squadron of ZAFT mobile suits darted away victoriously.

"Well, that's not good," Trojan grunted—

An instant later, a fusillade of beams erupted out of the darkness and ripped four of the mobile suits out of the sky, and the Twilight Cortana rocketed into the fray with a beam rifle blast that drove the rest back. Lily launched herself back and fired down at them with the two long-range cannons; two of the machines vanished in the blasts, but the rest split up and showered her with return fire.

The Green Frame swung down into their ranks with a salvo of beam rifle blasts, and a GINN staggered back and exploded, pierced by one of the bolts. The rest shifted their fire effortlessly to the Green Frame and Trojan darted back with a surprised yelp.

"Those robot ones are so fast!" he cried. "Hey Lily, a little help here?"

With two blazing red blasts, the Twilight Cortana flung itself into battle—but the fire merely shifted to it instead, and the two Gundams fell back behind their beam shields.

"This is hopeless!" Lily wailed.

"No!" Trojan shouted back. "Nothing's hopeless! Not yet!" The Green Frame and Cortana turned and rushed away as the ZAFT mobile suits opened fire again. "We just need to regroup...!"

—

The thin line of the Resistance and the faltering soldiers of the Alliance were already disintegrating, and it was all Rau Le Creuset could do not to sneer in contempt at all of them. So ZAFT had more forces than they'd expected and that Goliath was proving to be unexpectedly invincible. But he supposed this was par for course.

Flashing across the battlefield, the Judgment Gundam's DRAGOONs made short work of an attacking squad of automated units, and Rau took the opportunity to glance across the fray towards the ZAKU Goliath itself. It raised its left hand; a swarm of red, shining beams lanced out; a _Nelson_-class cruiser in front of the Goliath vanished in a plume of flame. Beams stretched off seemingly every point of its body to slice attacking mobile suits out of the sky. Rau smirked as a Zamzazar mobile armor rushed in with claws wide open; it plunged through the beam shield with its positron reflector, forced its way through, and charged towards the Goliath—

...and the Goliath simply seized the Zamzazar in its left hand and crushed it, then tossed the sparking remains away to explode behind it.

"Yes, that will do nicely, my little angel of death," he chuckled. "Now we just have to get you there."

—

"You are out of your fucking mind!" screamed Shinn Asuka as the Zulfiqar and Crusader Gundams clashed, sword to sword, sparks flying. Sven snarled back wordlessly and slammed his sword down in a hard overhead blow, sending the Zulfiqar staggering back; he followed it up with a brutal horizontal swing that sent the blue and off-white Gundam reeling even further.

"The Phantom Pain forced me to give up on all my dreams," Sven said, "so if nothing else, I'll claim the satisfaction of destroying you!" The Crusader charged with a blast from its Agni Kai cannon; the Zulfiqar danced around it and the two Gundams clashed again. "The man who has eluded and defeated me for years! I'll end it here!"

Shinn scowled back. "And you're really willing to let the entire world burn?"

"The world is of no concern to me."

Anger flashed up Shinn's spine and he flung the Crusader back with his sword. "You bastard!" he screamed, and launched the Zulfiqar forward. Sven swung up his sword to defend, but the Zulfiqar sent him reeling with a series of devastating slashes. "What the hell do you have to fight for?! Are you just a tool for your commanders?! I thought there _was_ something in there—something afraid, something sad, something that _didn't_ want to be this way!"

Sven ground his teeth as the Crusader quaked.

"But if you really don't care," Shinn snapped, "then I'll treat you just the way you are! _A monster!_"

Sven felt his blood freeze at the word. The Zulfiqar drew back its sword and charged. Sven raised his own blade to parry, but the Zulfiqar suddenly darted to the side with a flurry of afterimages. Sven whirled around, eyes wide—

...and then the Zulfiqar was there, and with a screech of torn metal, Shinn brought his sword down through the Crusader, slicing off its head, its left arm, and its left leg at the knee. The Crusader threw sparks and smoke as it brought its sword up again—but Shinn charged forward with a scream and slammed the mobile suit across the chest with the sword, tearing a smoldering gash in the black armor.

Sven went silent, his image vanished from the auxiliary screen, and Shinn let out a breath as he calmed himself. There were, after all, more important enemies out here. Other monsters to slay.

He turned the Zulfiqar back towards the battle and took off.

—

Beams and the flashing shapes of blue DRAGOON pods darted across the battlefield, and it was all Grey Saiba could do to keep up. At the center of the storm waited the Vega Freedom Gundam, impassively watching as the DRAGOONs battered the three Alliance Gundams into submission.

Up above, the Hail Buster flickered back into existence, already missing a leg, beam cannon extended—only to fall under fire of the DRAGOONs. The black Gundam struggled to line up its beam cannon anyway; the DRAGOONs streaked in and blew off the Gundam's left arm and its entire cannon assembly. Merau yelped in surprise and opened the missile bays—but two beams from the DRAGOONs pierced them and blew them apart, ravaging the Hail Buster's torso.

"Dammit...!" Merau groaned. "How did he _do_ that?!"

The Gale Strike Gundam, missing its right leg and its entire left arm lunged up behind the Vega Freedom with its remaining sword held high—only for the white Gundam to whip around, beam saber in hand, and sever the Gale Strike's head and right arm at the elbow with a swift chop.

"Erin, get out of there!" Merau cried.

"My weapons!" Erin exclaimed. "How did he—?!"

The Vega Freedom brought its saber around for a killing stroke—

"_No you don't!_" Grey screamed, and burst forward; the DRAGOONs swept in with a fusillade of beams that claimed the Regen Duel's backpack and right arm. Grey closed in anyway with a shout and leveled off the beam rifle.

Undaunted, the Vega Freedom closed the rest of the distance in a flash of afterimages and sliced off the Regen Duel's left arm at the shoulder and left leg at the knee. Grey fired the thruster with one more angry roar and slammed into the Vega Freedom, driving the white Gundam back—but it slammed its knee up into the Regen Duel's chest, then kicked it further back and opened up its cannons for a final full burst. Grey looked on in disbelief as the Vega Freedom glowered down at him and the guns fired—

...and then the Hail Buster was there.

Grey Saiba watched in horror as the blasts slammed head-on into the Hail Buster and tore it apart. The explosion flung his ruined Regen Duel back, but the force never reached his brain; the only thing before his eyes was his friend.

The Vega Freedom glanced up at something else on the battlefield and promptly took off, DRAGOONs racing to follow. Grey remained behind in the Regen Duel's cockpit and could only stare at the cloud of debris before him.

"Merau..."

The tears immediately began to flow, and he brought his fists down against the console.

"_Merau!_"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"I'll send my pilots wherever they're needed," Meyrin promised, "but if we're going to do this, they're going to need to come back and reload."

On the auxiliary screen, Joseph Copland seemed to sense the tension on the _Minerva_'s bridge as he nodded. "We're too disorganized to carry out proper maneuvers," he said, "but we can surely manage a massed counterattack on the enemy. We'll need some time to get the word out. That will be your opportunity. And when we're done..."

"Then we'll be there for it," Meyrin said. "_Minerva_, out."

The screen went dark; she sat back and dredged up her memories of Lacus Clyne. A teenage girl had once led a band of soldiers with powerful weapons and powerful ideals to save the world not once, but twice. Surely she could keep that legacy alive one more time.

"Roxy, order our pilots to temporarily return to the ship," she said quietly. "Have Abes and his crew on standby to quickly reload and fix. Break out the extra weapons." She turned her eyes towards the hulking ZAKU Goliath—still heading for the Earth. "And make it quick."

—

The red and blue Destiny Impulse units circled the Gundam Eclipse like sharks and showered it with red beams. Emily's eyes darted between the two of them; the _Minerva_ was ordering her to return for some special assignment. Once again, she just didn't have time for these two.

Varder charged with a scream. "_Quit mocking me!_"

The Gundam Eclipse rocketed back to avoid the Impulse's furious sword swings. The blue unit slid in behind the Eclipse, its own swords ready; Emily whipped around and curled the Dragon's Tail around one of them, then yanked it free. Lilith hissed a curse and charged forward with her remaining sword; Emily batted her away, then turned again to deflect the red Impulse's bone-rattling downward swings.

"I have had _just about enough_ of your arrogant little ass!" Varder screamed. "I am a soldier! You are not! You are going to die, like the child you are!"

Emily pursed her lips as the red Destiny Impulse closed in from the front and the blue one from behind. "I'm a child, am I?" she asked.

"_Shut your fucking mouth!_" roared Varder, and the Impulse pulled back both its swords.

And then, quicker than the eye could see, Emily lunged forward and swept the blue Impulse's stolen sword through the red Impulse's arms, severing them both at the elbows. Varder's eyes went wide in disbelief—and then, an instant later, everything went white.

Emily winced as she slammed the Eclipse's beam sword into the Impulse's cockpit, and that churning ball of hatred inside vanished. And as that happened, a tornado of anguish and rage whipped up behind her. The Eclipse whirled around and ran the Dragon's Tail through the blue Destiny Impulse's left shoulder and head. The maimed mobile suit staggered back, smoke billowing and sparks flashing, and the Eclipse rocketed away as Lilith Ramsi's screams echoed in Emily's ears.

—

To be continued...


	48. Phase 48: The Ghosts of Solomon's Sword

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 48 - The Ghosts of Solomon's Sword

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - Battleship **_**Minerva**_**, Debris Belt**

There were perks to being the captain. And then there were drawbacks. And right now, Meyrin Hawke was most assuredly experiencing one of the drawbacks.

Wings spread and engines roaring, the _Minerva_ rocketed along the rear of what had become the combined lines of the Resistance, the Earth Alliance, and the Phantom Pain, of a sort. They didn't seem to be cooperating well, but they did at least seem to appreciate the overarching need to direct their fire at ZAFT instead of each other. But in a battle like this, the nebulous lines of the fleet's positions were as dangerous at the rear as they were at the front. The ZAKU Goliath, after all, didn't appear to discriminate.

That meant the captain could not leave the bridge as the mobile suits were reloaded and the pilots grabbed a quick bite to eat before charging back into the fray. Time was of the essence.

She forced the other thoughts out of her mind. There was far more at stake than her own anxieties over the _Minerva_'s erstwhile star mobile suit pilot. That was the sort of sacrifice Lacus Clyne would have made, because there was more at stake here than she had any right to jeopardize with her own interests and worries. And the _Minerva_ had gotten by for three years already on faith in Shinn Asuka to make the impossible possible or whatever. What was one more battle?

Meyrin closed her eyes for a moment as the _Minerva_ raced towards its next position. Being Lacus Clyne was such a burden; she could scarcely imagine how Lacus Clyne had dealt with it.

—

Shinn Asuka blew out a tired sigh as he slumped against the wall of the pilot lounge, a water bottle in hand. It would only be a few short minutes, not even an hour, before they went plunging back into battle again. He had already slain one dragon. There was another one still out there.

Stella landed softly next to him. "Is Shinn gonna fight the Freedom again...?"

She always had a way of seeming to read his thoughts. He nodded solemnly. "Somebody has to."

"For...Miki," she said, eyes growing misty, "for our friends."

"For our friends," Shinn agreed.

Stella gently took his hand. "Will Shinn be okay...?"

"I've fought him before."

"But...will Shinn be okay?"

He offered her a small smile. "I'll be fine, Stella." He put his other hand over hers and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "I promised you I'll never let you be alone. And you never will be alone. But this fight..." He shook his head. "I have to fight him. I have to beat him. Otherwise, I'll..."

Stella frowned. "Shinn will always be sad."

Of course she understood. She always did. "Exactly."

Stella gave him a warm hug. "Just come back," she murmured.

—

"So," sighed Sting Oakley as he watched Abes and his crews frantically reload the Fujin Gundam's missile tubes, "this is it, huh?"

Auel shrugged, his arms crossed. "Fuckers still have to go through us."

Sting frowned. "You know they were using Extended out there."

"Of course they were."

"Which leads me to ask..." He paused and searched for the words for a moment. "After the war, I was going to go back to Althea. They offered me a position to help...rehabilitate them, I guess you could say." He looked awkwardly back at his mobile suit. "It's what Lee would have wanted. I know it. I'd help Dr. Coast and the others get the Extended surgically repaired, and I'd help try to set them up as much as possible for foster parents and living as normal children." He shrugged himself. "Something we never had, y'know?"

Auel arched an eyebrow. "So what's your point?"

"I was going to ask if you're interested in doing that."

Silence descended over them both for a moment, before Auel looked away. "I...don't know if I can do that." He shrugged again. "I mean, honestly. You think I can rehabilitate someone?"

"It doesn't matter," Sting replied. "What matters is that we're both examples. Examples of Extended who broke free from the Alliance's grip and made their own way in the world." He gestured towards the Fujin and Marduk, down below. "If the life of an Extended was always hopeless no matter what, we wouldn't be here; we'd be in one of those Phantom Pain machines getting butchered out there. Those kids at Althea don't know that it's possible to break free, but you and me? We're proof. And they're going to need that."

Auel stared down at the Marduk's darkened face for a moment and cracked a smile. "Well, when you put it like that..."

—

The silence was crushing as Athrun Zala stared out the pilot lounge windows, over the vast sweep of the _Minerva_'s hangar. The mechanics were reloading the Aurora Gundam's missile launchers for another round of battle.

He glanced over at the crimson Gundam's equally fiery pilot. "Are you sure you wanna go with me on this?"

Viveka turned up her nose. "I can't believe you still think it's necessary to ask me that."

"Just making sure." He looked back down into the hangar. "I didn't think killing comrades is your thing."

"Athrun, if you say he's really so evil and has to be destroyed, then I will go with you. And I'll do it. And besides," she clenched her mismatched fists, "if he's really screwing up my little sister's head—"

"I don't think she's as screwed up as he thinks she is," Athrun interrupted. Viveka blinked in surprise. "Not quite." He turned around to face her again. "It won't matter if we get this right. But, well, you've seen what Rau Le Creuset can do with a mobile suit. You know he'll be a dangerous foe. And he's a Newtype. I can deal with that, but you..."

Viveka arched an eyebrow. "This better not be the prelude to asking me to stay out of it 'for my own good' or some bullshit."

Athrun smiled back. "As if you would anyway."

He turned back down towards the Celestial Justice, his own distinctive war steed. The impulse to protect her was still strong, but if there was anything the past seven years of war had taught him, it was that he could not protect everyone.

That was the most painful lesson he'd ever had to learn, and even now, putting that knowledge into practice hurt as well. He looked over at Viveka and saw so much—finally, after seven years of postponement and punishment, a glimmer of happiness was edging its way through the clouds.

"Well," he said, "either way, just be careful out there." And with that, he turned around and kissed her lips.

"Of course I will, you dummy," she shot back with a grin.

—

Under Trojan Noiret's nervous gaze, Emily finally cracked and glanced sadly over her shoulder at him.

"I don't know if I'll get another chance," she said. "I...I have to."

Trojan nodded solemnly. "But if she doesn't want to go over..."

"She will," Emily insisted. "I'll convince her." She looked back at him again. "I've spent my whole life either cowering from my father or missing my mother. I've finally got a chance to have her back, even if she's just a clone. I can't let that slip away."

"I know," Trojan said, "but...just don't risk what you already have for something you don't."

Emily stared down into the hangar, where the mechanics made their last-minute adjustments to the mighty Eclipse. "You don't have to come with me—"

"But I will anyways," Trojan said, and pulled her close with his arm around her shoulder, "because that's what I'm here for."

Emily closed her eyes. "I know..." She glanced back up. "And you too, Lily."

Trojan blinked in surprise—but then Lily popped out of hiding behind one of the couches with a loud groan, and Trojan whirled around in surprise.

"How did you even know I was there?!" she sputtered.

Emily tapped the side of her head. "Newtype."

"The hell are you doing in here?!" Trojan wailed, only to be interrupted by Lily's maniacal giggling.

"You two are just so cute together—"

"Haven't you ever heard of privacy?"

Emily smiled as they descended into an argument. Of course she would save Zero-Two. She would have no choice. If she didn't, she would never be able to forgive herself. But if she failed...well, if she failed, at least there was something to which she could always come back.

—

Rau Le Creuset nearly shuddered with anticipation as he strapped himself back into the Judgment Gundam's cockpit seat. The _Minerva_ was nearing its first staging point for an attack on the ZAKU Goliath. Pilots were to stand by; destiny was about to begin.

He passed his senses briefly over the _Minerva_'s various pilots. All of them tense, none of them looking forward to this battle...because, after all, they all knew what was ahead of them. The cream of ZAFT's crop. The most terrifying of their superweapons. The most fanatical of their soldiers. Of course Valentine would employ no less in her master plan.

But Rau had one of his own, and his thoughts settled on Emily, in the Eclipse's cockpit. She would have to learn that the world was not as gentle as she thought. Seeing her delusion that she could save that clone of her mother shatter would be the final straw. And conveniently, Valentine had lined up a weapon for her vengeance on a world gone mad. It would all come together nicely, and once again, all he had to do was stand in the shadows and pull the right strings to make his puppets dance.

He sat back with a sigh. All the _Minerva_'s pilots could do now was wait for the ship to reach its position and for the counterattack to begin. But waiting—and the quiet thrill of manipulation—had served him well over the years. At long last, he knew, he deserved this. The world had wronged him in a most terrible way. No world that created human refuse like himself could be corrected. No world populated by creatures such as these would ever rise above hatred and bloodshed.

The world was sickly. It was dying. And it was the task of the Angel of Death to bring an end to those whose time had come.

Rau sat back with a smile.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"I can do this for you," said Meyrin Hawke, her determined face on the _Charlemagne_ bridge's auxiliary screen. "I'll spare you three of my mobile suits. They'll go with you to attack the ZAFT flagship and Messiah. The rest have to come with me; I'm going up against that giant red thing."

Danilov arched an eyebrow. "On your own?"

"Whoever has a death wish can come along."

"The very picture of confidence, you are." He sat back. "As long as we can get past Messiah's beam shield, we should be alright. But they still have that NEO-GENESIS array—"

"Which charges twice as fast as the original GENESIS," Meyrin added. "You're going to need a lot of troops to get past that, and the fleet."

Danilov glanced out the bridge windows, at the warships coalescing around him. Most of them were from the Alliance member nations' fleets, the rest from the Resistance...and then there were those of the Phantom Pain, falling into formation among their erstwhile enemies. At least even at the end, Lord Djibril's loyalists could see who the world's real enemy was, if only for a moment.

"Well," he said with a smile, "we _are_ from the Phantom Pain."

Meyrin smiled back wryly. "Good luck," she said, and the screen went dark. Danilov's own smile faded as the _Charlemagne_ roared forward. They would need far more than that.

—

The crosshairs passed over another city. Casablanca, Morocco. Population of about three million. Well, not for long.

Valentine Sunogachi sat back in the ZAKU Goliath's control room as the targeting system locked on and the crimson monstrosity brought its Armageddon cannon to bear. The Goliath had effortlessly blown through three Destroy Gundams, two Zamzazars, and four Euclids, along with countless mobile suits and warships.

Nobody could stop the colossus on its inexorable path of destruction towards the Earth, its wake littered with the remains of those who had tried. And now the path of destruction would cover the smoking craters on the Earth where there had once been cities, burned away by the might of the ZAKU Goliath and the divine justice of the Coordinators.

Casablanca was only the beginning. Soon they would reach the dense population centers and administrative complexes of Europe. The world had already trembled as it watched the light of the heavens erase Dakar; now they would know fear again.

"Charging is complete," the weapons officer said.

Valentine leaned forward with a smile. "Fire."

—

It had been a long time since he had used one of these, but as the Vega Freedom Gundam lifted its wings and backed into the opening braces of a waiting METEOR unit, Kira Yamato did his best to crush the memories. The last time he had used one of these things was Solomon's Sword, and the time before that...

He shook his head. There was too much to do.

"The enemy lines are falling back in all sectors," Admiral Harkill said from the CIC aboard the _Rodinia_, "but their defense is beginning to stabilize and there's been a lot of movement around the rear of their lines. They may be gearing up for a counterattack."

Kira scanned over the battlefield in frustration. "Of course they are. We only caught them by surprise. They weren't going to be on their heels forever." The Vega Freedom shook as the braces locked into place and the METEOR system quickly came online. With this machine, in two wars, he had laid waste to entire fleets; now he was needed more than ever. "Keep pressing the attack," he ordered, "and close our formation around the Goliath. Above all, we need to get it to Earth. What about Messiah?"

"NEO-GENESIS recharging is underway. Charge is at thirty-one percent."

"Then tell Commandant Reeves to move Messiah in closer. We'll begin the next phase of the operation now." He glanced over at the team of ZAKUs that had opened up the shipping crate containing the METEOR unit. "I'm going. Return to your posts."

"Yes sir!" the squad leader exclaimed, and the four ZAKUs rocketed back into the battle. Kira turned his eye back ahead, the enemy fleet already massing again in the distance. He would have to clear a path through those hundreds of ships and thousands of mobile suits—a path to the future.

—

Being on the offensive had a different feeling than the defensive. Defense was characterized by reacting to threats, by letting things happen and then dealing with it. But offense...that was all about _making_ things happen.

With that thought somewhere in the back of his mind, Trojan Noiret charged ahead with a shout at the head of a swarm of mobile suits and warships. A wall of fire lanced forward into the advancing ZAFT lines and sliced machines out of the sky, one by one. Up ahead, a _Nazca_-class destroyer bucked under the full fire of an Alliance warship squadron and vanished in a blaze. Trojan ducked between the flying debris and charged, down towards the _Laurasia_-class frigate moving up to replace it.

Down below, the _Laurasia_, a squad of ZAKUs, and a full dozen older ZAFT mobile suits rushed forward, guns blazing. The frigate let loose a withering barrage from its beam cannons that sliced through an oncoming _Drake_-class destroyer—but from the thundering explosion emerged the Twilight Cortana, and its DRAGOONs blazed down like hornets to lash the lime-green warship with beam blasts and ward off its mobile suit defenders.

Trojan charged through their fire and shot down one of the ZAKUs, then darted around their return fire and brought his sabers down through an incoming GINN. The rest of the mobile suits backed away into a tighter formation—only to get showered with beam fire from the Cortana that forced them back apart, and the Green Frame seized its chance to blast between their ranks and rake the _Laurasia_ with fire across its dorsal side.

The frigate swung its railguns around—but the Green Frame darted up over their range, and with a triumphant yell, Trojan plunged the custom rifle's sabers into the ship's bridge. The _Laurasia_ bucked backward as the Green Frame pumped a round of beam blasts into its hull, and Trojan backed away and rocketed to safety as the ships behind him opened fire and ripped the frigate out of the sky.

Up ahead, ZAFT's warships and mobile suits began to falter—and Trojan grinned at the sight. It was good to be back on the offensive.

—

A _Nazca_-class destroyer buckled under the Earth Alliance's overwhelming firepower and exploded up ahead. ZAFT mobile suits, manned and unmanned, scattered before the blast—and Rau Le Creuset went to work. The DRAGOONs lashed out and blew them apart one by one, and the Judgment Gundam moved in with its rifle at the ready.

Up ahead, a DOM Trooper came streaking out of the flames, Gigalauncher in hand, and showered the Judgment with a hail of bazooka rounds and beam blasts. Rau darted to the left as the DOM circled around him—and then smirked as it was torn to shreds by the oncoming forces of the Alliance and the Resistance. Having the bigger army made all the difference.

He turned at the sight of the ZAKU Goliath, far up ahead. A Euclid mobile armor had broken through the ZAFT lines and charged towards the Goliath; the colossus merely flung it back with a concentrated barrage of fire that knocked out the positron reflector, and let the warships and mobile suits wipe it out themselves. So much destructive power tied up in that thing...

Rau whipped around at the sight of an oncoming squad of ZAKUs and blasted them apart with a barrage from the DRAGOONs. "I suppose we'll have to bring Zero-Two out to play first," he muttered, and set about searching the battlefield for her distinctive presence. She was surely out here somewhere, and once she was found, it would be child's play to lead her to Emily.

—

"So, uh, how are we going to do this?" Viveka asked quietly. "Going after Rau, I mean."

The Celestial Justice and Aurora Gundams roared across the battlefield, both in mobile armor mode. Athrun frowned. "We'll keep our distance for the time being and wait for an opportunity where he's more or less alone," he said. "He won't go down without a fight."

Viveka smirked. "Between the two of us, he won't have a chance."

"I hope so." Athrun glanced up ahead. "Watch out!"

The two Gundams veered apart and swiftly transformed as a squad of ZAFT mobile suits went on the attack up ahead. The mobile suits behind them scattered and Athrun charged forward with a salvo of beams that broke their ranks apart. The Aurora Gundam shot through, whipped around, and shot down two of them before they could react; it darted away as they turned and Athrun seized his chance to destroy another two. The ZAFT mobile suits broke ranks and fled in opposite directions, only to fall into the raking fire of the Alliance and Resistance mobile suits to the rear.

"In the meantime," he said, "we've still got work to do here!"

Engines roaring, the two Gundams lanced down into the ZAFT formations and peppered them with beam shots. The mobile suits took cover behind their shields as the Alliance and Resistance forces descended upon them; up ahead, a _Laurasia_-class frigate lurched back as waves of fire slammed into it head-on and sliced it apart.

Unseen by the other combatants, the two Gundams slipped away in the inferno, and Athrun set his senses to work searching for Rau's presence on the battlefield. He was edging closer to the ZAKU Goliath, and that only confirmed Athrun's fears.

"Hey," Viveka spoke up, "what would happen if Emily just didn't do what he wanted her to do? Would he try to kill her?"

"Probably." Athrun sighed grimly. "He would want to cover his trail."

"Oh, well that fucking does it," Viveka snarled. "His ass is history now."

"I know I said this before, but Rau is a force beyond anything you've fought before," Athrun said. "And I know you can handle yourself out here, but that's not going to stop me from worrying. Please, don't push your luck against him."

Viveka smiled back. "You're cute when you worry."

"I mean it, Viveka. I don't want to lose you." He looked away sadly. "I've lost too many people as it is."

"But," Viveka said, "I'm not like the rest, now am I?"

He thought back to those days with his old friends—to those days with Cagalli. "No," he said, "I guess not."

—

The Gundam Eclipse's engines hummed as the black mobile suit roared forward into the fray. The ZAFT fleet up ahead was condensing its formation around that vast red machine—and behind them, Emily could see the dark outline of Messiah creeping towards the battlefield. The feeling that they were walking into a trap gnawed at her, but trap or not, there was no choice. Not at this point.

Up ahead, a squadron of unmanned machines led by a team of ZAKUs charged forward, and a _Nazca_-class destroyer trailed behind them. The warship unleashed a full salvo from its main guns; Emily steeled herself and threw the Eclipse down into the fray.

The mobile suits darted apart to rake the Eclipse's flanks with fire; the black Gundam's beam wings flashed to life and the mobile suit roared between their ranks amid a storm of afterimages. Caught off guard, the ZAFT machines turned to follow—and up above, the _Nazca_ turned its railguns on the charging Eclipse. Emily let instinct guide her hands as she wove her way through the warship's railgun and CIWS fire—and then the ship turned one of its main guns towards her. The Eclipse lunged out of harm's way, leveled off its Dragon's Fire launcher, and squeezed off a blast; the blinding column of blue light swept down over the ship's prow and punched clear through. The destroyer shuddered under the blow; she turned the gun to the side and fired again, straight through the cockpit. The ZAFT mobile suits opened fire again, but too late; the _Nazca_ snapped in two and vanished in a thunderous plume of flames, and before the enemy mobile suits could react, Emily had lanced into their ranks and wiped out four of them with one long sweep from the glowing Dragon's Tail heat rod.

"_YOU!_"

Emily snapped her attention upward in surprise and whirled around—just in time for a hard swing from an anti-ship sword to land against her beam shield and send the Eclipse reeling. She scrambled to switch to the beam sword and looked on in shock as the headless blue Destiny Impulse, still missing its left arm and now missing its right leg below the knee as well, pointed its sword furiously at her.

"_You,_" snarled Lilith Ramsi, "_you_ _took him away from me!_"

"Wha—" Emily started; the Destiny Impulse plunged forward and brought its sword down again, stopped only by a timely counterstrike from the Eclipse.

"You took him away, piece by piece!" Lilith screamed. "Day after day, you took away all his goals and dreams, until the only thing left was _killing you!_" The Impulse surged forward, beam wings blazing to life. "And now you've made sure he'll _never come back!_"

Emily scowled back as she regained control over her tumbling mobile suit, just in time to deflect another sword slash. "Don't lecture me about losing people—"

"You didn't kill him! You killed him _slowly_, bit by bit, and then you killed the possibility that he'd ever get better!" The Impulse closed in. "_So now I'll take something from—_"

Her image on the auxiliary screen disappeared as a flurry of beams sliced the Destiny Impulse apart. Emily blinked in disbelief as the shredded mobile suit vanished in a cloud of fire—and then she looked up as a familiar point of pressure approached.

"Impressive skills, but you could stand for some battlefield sense," said Morgan Chevalier—as his Fenrir and a battalion of white and blue Windams dropped in around the Eclipse. "What are you still doing here? I thought you _Minerva_ pilots were going to go deal with that red thing."

Emily looked around helplessly and eyed the Windams surrounding her carefully. "I—um, I was distracted—"

"Yeah, well, get undistracted," Morgan said. He frowned as he studied her face for a moment. "And no, we're not going to shoot you. As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to kill that red thing for us, that makes us friends." The Fenrir pointed towards the ZAKU Goliath, still on the move. "Now get. We'll have your back until you get there."

Emily stared back at him for a moment—but there was no deceit in his eyes or in his presence, and with a nod, she moved the Eclipse past the Alliance units and took off. And true to his word, Morgan and his troops were right behind her.

—

Another bisected ZAKU exploded and Shinn turned his eyes towards an oncoming pair of unmanned GINNs. He launched the Zulfiqar between them; the beam wings sawed them both in half. A GuAIZ R lunged up behind him, beam rifle leveled; the Zulfiqar whipped around, sword in hand, and slashed it in two at the waist.

There was a presence up there he knew all too well. He had felt Courtney vanish and that had told him all he needed to know. There was only one left now besides himself—and it was going to stay that way.

The Zulfiqar charged forward with a scream from its pilot, and up ahead, a Resistance Strike Dagger exploded under a hail of beam fire. A handful of other machines backed away behind their shields—with Riika Sheder's blue ZAKU Phantom at the lead. A GOUF Ignited roared out of the ZAFT ranks and lunged up over her beam blasts; it came back down with a hard sword swing that ripped the ZAKU's right arm clean off and severed the right leg at the knee on the way down. Riika backed away; another swing took off the ZAKU's head. One of the Resistance's GINNs threw itself into the fight, heavy sword drawn back; the GOUF whipped around, ducked beneath the clumsy blow, and tore it in half with a sword blow to the waist. The ZAFT mobile suit turned back towards Riika's sparking ZAKU—

And then Shinn came down with a scream and smashed his sword through the GOUF's shoulder, tearing it in two. He kicked the sparking pieces away and whirled around to activate his beam shield and deflect fire from another pair of oncoming ZAFT ZAKUs—and before they could react, he snapped up the long-range cannon and vaporized them both in a single shimmering blast.

"Riika," he said, "you can't fight in that thing anymore. Get out of here."

"I can't!" she cried. "They...they killed Courtney, Shinn! I'm not gonna let them get away—"

"_No!_" Shinn snapped, and turned his furious eyes towards Riika, shocking her into silence. "Don't say that! _Never _say that!" Up ahead, another team of mobile suits went on the attack; Shinn plunged forward with his sword and slashed one of them in half before they could react. The rest broke their ranks and backed away. "Don't wind up like me, Riika! I've been living on revenge and anger for three years and look where it's gotten me!" The Zulfiqar darted past a ZAKU Warrior's fire and sliced it in two. "Yes, he died, and that's wrong—but you're still alive! So get out of here and don't fuck it up!"

Riika stared in disbelief through her tears as Shinn butchered the last ZAKU. A white bolt of energy burst before him and he turned the Zulfiqar around to face something out in the middle of the chaos. "Shinn..."

"Riika, despite everything that's happened, you're still my friend," he said. "There's a man out there, on his way here, that I have to kill. The fact that I have to kill him is why you should never care about revenge. It's turned me into a wreck." He switched to the Zulfiqar's beam rifle and clenched his fists around the controls; he was on his way, he was so close... "And besides which, even if your machine was intact, he'd kill you anyway. So go."

Riika swallowed. "You're going to fight him on your own?"

"I wouldn't have it any other way. Go."

She stared after him for a long moment, before firing what was left of the thrusters and rocketing away towards the Resistance's dwindling fleet. In the Zulfiqar, Shinn turned around and fixed his attention on the presence before him. The pressure, the little kernel of sorrow and horror buried under layers of steel and resignation...but that kernel wasn't worth saving. He didn't even know if it _could_ be saved. And either way, his soul, so blackened by vengeance, would have no rest if he did anything else.

Up ahead, the Vega Freedom Gundam, nestled in its METEOR unit, came to a stop in front of the waiting Zulfiqar. Kira Yamato's battle-scarred face appeared on the auxiliary screen.

"Getting in the way to the last, are you?" he asked.

Shinn licked his lips. "I've been waiting a long time for this."

The Zulfiqar's beam wings came to life with a flash, the METEOR's beam sabers lit up, and the two mobile suits charged.

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

"There they are."

Lyle Markus shivered with anticipation as his sensor officer finally located the _Minerva_. The _Fortuna_'s delinquent older sister had run around the margins of the world and interfered in ZAFT's affairs long enough. And now was his opportunity.

"Tannhäuser is charged, sir," the weapons officer spoke up.

"Then target the _Minerva_ and fire."

The _Fortuna_ shuddered as the shining column of antimatter lanced forward from the warship's prow, down towards the winged battleship—

...and instead of making contact, the _Minerva_ suddenly veered upward and fired back with its Tristan cannons.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Lyle roared, and the _Fortuna_ lurched to the side as the Tristan blasts seared by the _Fortuna_'s starboard wing. The _Minerva_ righted itself up ahead and charged forward with another Tristan salvo, forcing the _Fortuna_ on the defensive.

"_Minerva_ is increasing to flank speed!" the sensor officer exclaimed.

"Helm, increase to flank!" Lyle barked, and glowered up at the red and gray warship as the two vessels began to circle each other like sharks. "So, you want to fight before you die...?"

—

The sights of the battle were moving further away from their position as Shams and Mudie tended to a wounded Sven in the shattered cockpit of the broken Crusader Gundam. He'd lost a great deal of blood and his flight suit was a veritable quilt of adhesive patching material, applied as much to staunch the bleeding from his body as it was to seal the holes in his suit. Sven himself, pale-faced and drenched in a cold sweat, stared forward numbly as Mudie finished applying the last of the patching.

"Well," Shams said quietly, "we've still got the transponders. Someone will pick us up."

Mudie frowned. "But who is 'someone?'"

"That I don't know."

Sven stared past them, out at the stars, and Shinn Asuka's words echoed in his mind.

_Am I really just a monster?_

And then that kid piped up.

_So far,_ he said, _but, you know...you could change that._

_Even now?_

_Even now_.

He blinked away his blurring vision. There they were, all stretched out before him—the stars. He reached back, after the memories of his childhood, and recalled again the wonder he'd felt for what lay out there—and the courage it had taken to go looking for it.

Courage. The word flooded through him. That was what he had lacked. Courage. For so long, it had been so easy to just acquiesce to his fate. To do what his commanders told him to do, rather than what was right. To accept his life as a minion of Lord Djibril, rather than try to reclaim his stolen dreams. To let that little boy bounce around the edges of his consciousness and remind him of what he could have been, rather than try to crush him once and for all. Courage had sustained everyone who had stepped out of humanity's Earthly cradle and explored the cold and unfeeling abyss. Courage was what he would have needed to succeed out there. Maybe that was why he'd never gone in the first place.

An explosion far away burst across his field of vision. ZAFT. They were still out there too—and they wanted to destroy the world. Burn it all down. And if they could do that, why would they stop with the Earth? What would stop them from moving on to make the whole universe kneel in submission?

_Nothing,_ the kid inside him answered. _They'll burn down the stars._

"The stars," he murmured; Shams and Mudie both blinked in surprise.

"What?" asked Shams.

"The stars," he said again, and pointed with a trembling hand. "I...when...I was a boy," he went on, "I wanted to be an...astronomer. Explore outer space. Go...to other planets."

Mudie looked at him with an expression of disbelief. "Why are you telling us this...?"

"I...wanted to explore," Sven said. "But now..."

"Sven, don't waste your energy," Shams said, and gently pushed him back into the seat. "Just relax—"

"They're...going to destroy the stars," Sven gasped. Shams and Mudie shared an incredulous look.

"You don't have any sedatives or something—" Shams began.

Sven blinked away the blurriness again—and then gathered his strength and shoved Mudie and Shams out of the Crusader's cockpit.

"Hey—what the fuck?!" Shams sputtered. "What are you—"

The cockpit hatch slammed shut, the battle-damaged Crusader shuddered to life, and the Gundam took off with a halting roar.

"Oh my God," Mudie breathed, "he's...he's still going to fight?"

Shams swallowed the lump in his throat he couldn't explain. "No," he said, "he's doing something else."

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

"Three Gundams from the _Minerva_'s stable, huh?" Ivan Danilov said with a skeptically raised eyebrow as the _Charlemagne_ drove forward into battle, a small fleet of warships right behind it. Standing on the hull in front of the bridge, the Fujin, Marduk, and Kali Gundams stared back—and the man who had called himself Sting merely shrugged.

"I assume we're all on the same side, here."

"Oh, we are," Danilov said. "I'm just savoring the irony."

The other man, the one Sting had called Auel, put on a contemptuous sneer. "As long as it fuckin' stays that way."

"_Anyway,_" Sting said, loudly and pointedly, "first target is that giant warship thing, whatever it's called. Then we take out Messiah. That's the plan as it was given to me. Sound good?"

Danilov smiled. "It will do."

Sting grinned back. "Then let's kick some ass."

—

"Emily!" cried Trojan Noiret as the Green Frame Kai and Twilight Cortana rushed across the battlefield. Up above, Emily blinked in surprise at the sight of the two mobile suits falling into formation—and at her side inside the Fenrir, Morgan frowned.

"Friends of yours?" he asked.

Emily nodded and turned back towards them. "I thought you two were taking a different route in."

"We were, but we got pushed back, so we're going with you," Trojan explained. He glanced at the Alliance mobile suits around them. "Who are these guys?"

"Friends, for the time being," Emily answered. "So where—"

"Uh, don't look now," Lily spoke up, "but I think we've got a few more coming in."

All eyes went to the front—and Emily cringed at the sight of a whole squadron of ZAFT warships and dozens of mobile suits rising to meet them. Just what they needed...

The Fenrir abruptly moved forward. "We will handle that," he said. "You three have a bigger fish to fry. All men, form up!" The Windams fell into formation around the Fenrir. "We will create an opening in that formation. You slip through. Don't look back, don't stop for anything. Is that clear?"

"R-right," Emily answered.

"Good. Then move out!"

The mobile suits charged down with a cloud of thruster exhaust and opened fire on the advancing squadron. The mobile suits immediately broke ranks; a squad of Doppelhorn Windams lined up to pummel the _Nazca_-class destroyer in the lead with artillery fire and drive it back. The ZAFT mobile suits let loose a storm of firepower that took down two of the Windams before the Fenrir's gunbarrels sliced into their ranks with a volley of beam fire.

Up ahead, the destroyer in the lead buckled, even as its CIWS fire shredded one of the Doppelhorn Windams. The three survivors fired again to tear smoldering black holes into the ship's hull—and then a squad of regular Windams rushed in, beam rifles blazing, to take advantage of the breach. The _Nazca_ finally shuddered and broke apart in a bone-rattling inferno.

"There's our chance," Emily said, "_go!_"

The Eclipse, the Green Frame Kai, and the Twilight Cortana darted amid the flames and wreckage and rocketed through the hole in the squadron's line. Emily spared one last glance back at the Fenrir—and then fixed her eyes back on the ZAKU Goliath. After all, Morgan was right. There was something else she had to do out here.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

Meyrin Hawke clenched her fists around her seat's armrests as the _Minerva_ shot down the _Fortuna_'s swarm of missiles. The warship plowed through the smoke, then fired back with its Isolde cannon. One of the shells clipped the _Fortuna_'s portside wing—but the blue and gray battleship fired back with its Tristans, undeterred, and the _Minerva_ quickly dove to avoid the blasts.

"Tannhäuser charge is still at sixty percent," Chen reported.

"Enemy is launching more missiles," Burt added.

"CIWS, respond!"

Again the CIWS cut down another salvo of missiles; again the _Minerva_ had to swerve off course to avoid a pulsing volley from the Tristans. Meyrin wracked her brain for a way around this enemy. It was another ship of the _Minerva_-class; it had all the same armaments, the same speed, the same capabilities as her own. She would have to outsmart herself to beat this thing.

_Well, if that's the case..._

"Malik, get us closer to a dense region of debris," she instructed. "Chen, instruct Abes and his men to get the anti-beam depth charges ready. Every single one of them."

"It's too late to go setting traps," Abbey warned.

The ship shook again as the CIWS sliced more missiles out of the sky. "We're not setting traps," Meyrin said. "We're playing a different game."

Up ahead, the _Fortuna_ charged forward with a blast from its Tristans.

—

A crackling set of beam blasts seared through space in front of the three VaROZ units and their squadron of ZAKU Warriors. Inside the cockpit of her own machine, Kara Guinness blinked in surprise—and then everything went to hell.

The green and white Fujin Gundam's four gunbarrels lanced out of nowhere and showered the ZAFT units with beam fire, and one of the ZAKUs disappeared in a thundering explosion. The VaROZs promptly split their formation.

"Jesus, where did they come from?!" Gary exclaimed.

"Hadley, fall back!" Juarez barked—but too late, as the gunbarrels claimed another two ZAKUs. Kara threw her VaROZ down beneath another blast—and came face to face with the Kali Gundam, which rammed her head-on with its shoulder, flung her aside, and pummeled Gary and Juarez with a round of beam fire.

Another wave came in from above—the Fujin Gundam dropped into battle with a crash and shot down yet another ZAKU. The survivors began to back away behind their shields, only to be wiped out by a storm of green bolts as the Marduk Gundam's shoulder shells let loose a torrent of beam fire. Kara swung up her own rifle to fire back—but the Fujin blocked her blasts with its beam shield, and then the Kali was back in her face with a blazing beam saber, and before she could react, the VaROZ's right arm went spiraling away. She fired back with the chest cannon; the two Gundams darted aside and the Marduk slapped the blast away with its Geschmeidig Panzer, then fired back another wave of beam fire.

Up above, the Kali stormed down into the face of Gary's VaROZ and sliced off its entire left arm. The VaROZ brought its beam rifle to bear, only for the Kali to slash it in two. Gary backed away; the Kali lunged forward with a backhanded saber swipe, claiming the rifle and the VaROZ's head—

And then the Fujin's gunbarrels lanced in and ripped his mobile suit apart. Kara's jaw dropped as she watched it explode, as all the ire he'd ever drawn out of her evaporated—

"How did they get like this?!" Juarez screamed. "They weren't—"

His own VaROZ lurched as the Fujin slashed off its left arm with a beam blade-assisted kick. He flung away his rifle and charged with a beam saber in hand; Kara moved in next to him with a saber of her own. The Fujin backed away; the Kali lunged up in front of it to deflect both their blows with one blade, then knock them both back. Juarez grunted as the gunbarrels ripped off one of the VaROZ's leg; the two Gundams darted apart—

And then Kara screamed as Juarez's VaROZ rammed itself into her...just as a blinding wave of red energy came rushing out of the ends of the Marduk's shoulder shells. She watched in horror as Juarez's mobile suit vanished in the blast and her own had its left arm, leg, and wing blown away. Sparks and smoke filled the cockpit, and tears filled her eyes, as Juarez Recardo disappeared.

What was left of the VaROZ rocked as the gunbarrels blasted away its head and its right foot, and then the Kali slashed out its chest cannon. The black Gundam raised its beam saber for a killing blow; Kara squeezed her eyes shut—

Nothing happened. She cracked an eye open. The Gundam stared at her impassively for a moment—and then backed away and joined the other two in taking off towards the ZAFT fleet.

Kara gaped after them, and then looked back at the wreckage that was left of her two friends—and finally broke down and cried.

—

A storm of beam fire flashed through the black sky around the afterimages of the Zulfiqar Gundam, diving through the chaos and squeezing off return shots with its beam rifle. Far down below, the Vega Freedom Gundam lined up for a devastating full burst from its mounted weapons and from the METEOR; Shinn flung the Zulfiqar to the side to avoid the torrent.

The METEOR unleashed a swarm of missiles. Shinn easily redirected them—but before he could veer them back towards their source, the Freedom charged forward with a sweeping swing of its beam swords and sent him back on the defensive. The missiles exploded around the Zulfiqar and sent it reeling back; Shinn dove away as the METEOR and the Freedom inside opened fire again.

"Athrun is the one I thought would've understood," Kira snarled, as the Freedom closed in. "You, on the other hand, were always just a rabid dog that needed to be put down."

The Zulfiqar hefted its sword. "Then come put me to sleep, jackass."

The Freedom charged again with another swing of its swords. "It's a real shame, too," Kira went on. "You might have done good for the world, instead of just chaos!"

"I thought I already did!" Shinn shot back, and paused long enough to squeeze off a long-range cannon blast that forced the Freedom to dodge with its cumbersome METEOR unit. The weapons platform fired back with another salvo of beams.

"And what a world you created!" Kira cried, as the METEOR sliced after the Zulfiqar with wide blows. "Blue Cosmos slaughtering Coordinators, civil war ravaging the planet, atrocities at every turn—"

"Oh, you wanna talk about atrocities?!" Shinn cut in. "How about we start with Copernicus?!"

The METEOR and the Freedom pounded the Zulfiqar's beam shields with a full burst. "You would not understand—"

"No, I wouldn't!" Shinn screamed. The Zulfiqar wove its way around the beams and fired back with its rifle, but came up empty as the METEOR veered out of the way and sent the Zulfiqar back on the defensive with another sword swipe. "In fact, that's why I've been fighting _against_ people who slaughter innocents!"

"A whole lot of good you did!" Kira shot back. "All you did was create more chaos! Nothing changed! You don't understand this world, and you have no place in the next!" The METEOR charged forward, beam swords blazing. "I'll pull the stars out of the sky before I let you—"

"_NO YOU WON'T!_"

Both combatants stopped short in disbelief—and then the battlefield split in two as the broken, sparking Crusader Gundam charged out of the darkness, anti-ship sword in hand, and plunged it into the Vega Freedom's METEOR unit. Kira hastily ejected the Gundam from its impaled weapons platform, darted away, and whipped around in shock.

Inside the Crusader, Sven slumped forward, blood trickling from his mouth.

_Am I still a monster...?_

His younger self smiled back. _Not anymore._

The Crusader disappeared as the METEOR exploded.

Inside the Zulfiqar, Shinn Asuka stared in shock as his persistent rival vanished in the flames. The pressure in front of him reclaimed his attention. Sven Cal Bayan could be mourned later. Right now, there was something else to be done—and now it was up to him to ensure that his old foe had not died in vain.

After all, the Vega Freedom floated in front of the Zulfiqar, beam rifles in hand, completely intact and with its eyes glowing bright gold.

"A level playing field," Shinn said with a smirk.

"I don't think so," Kira sneered back. "I have righteousness on my side."

Shinn's smirk only grew wider. "We'll see about that."

The two Gundams' eyes lit up and their duel began.

—

To be continued...


	49. Phase 49: Men of Destiny

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

—

Phase 49 - Men of Destiny

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - Debris Belt**

Dakar. Casablanca. Gibraltar. Lisbon. Madrid. Barcelona. The list of ruined cities grew ever larger as the ZAKU Goliath approached the Earth. Inside the humming control room, Valentine Sunogachi watched with mounting glee as the crosshairs slid over the city of Marseille on the southern shores of France. There was a Eurasian Federation naval base there; soon it would be just so much wreckage.

"Marshal," the officer in charge spoke up, "our losses are beginning to pile up. The fleet is—"

"Pull them in closer," Valentine said with a wave of her hand. "The important part is that we get through the atmosphere. Once we do, they can't stop us."

The officer looked down nervously at his screen. "The enemy fleet is launching its counterattack."

"Then let them," Valentine said, and leaned forward. "Fix the target on Marseille, France, and fire the Armageddon cannon."

Ever compliant, the ZAKU Goliath took aim with the long cannon and launched a pillar of golden light towards the Earth. Valentine smiled as the blast hit home far away, on the shores of the Mediterranean. They would descend, they would carve a path of destruction across Europe and Russia, they would tear their way through East Asia, and they would enter North America from the Bering Strait and lay waste to the nations of Earth. No one would stop them—and no one would ever threaten the Coordinators again.

—

Beams lanced across the black sky as the Vega Freedom and Zulfiqar Gundams did battle. Shinn wove his way through a storm of beam fire from the Freedom's DRAGOONs and fired back with his own beam rifle; the Freedom veered around his shots and fired back with a full burst from its own mounted guns and rifles, and the Zulfiqar lunged out of harm's way, back on the defensive.

"You'll just never understand," Kira snarled, as the Freedom wheeled around and pummeled the Zulfiqar with more beam blasts. Shinn snaked his way through the blasts and returned fire; the two Gundams whirled around each other, a storm of afterimages brewing between them. "If you did—"

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Shinn shot back, and the Zulfiqar punctuated its pilot with a volley of beams to the Freedom's beam shield. "Save your excuses for someone who cares."

Kira glowered back as the Freedom pounded the Zulfiqar back with another full burst and showered it in DRAGOON fire. "If you knew what I was doing here, you wouldn't think they're excuses!"

"Like there's any excuse anyway!" Shinn screamed; the Zulfiqar dove through a burst of beam fire and then whirled around to squeeze off a shot from its beam rifle that wiped out one of the DRAGOONs. Kira scowled and fired back with a full burst; Shinn darted aside and dodged the remaining DRAGOONs' furious fire.

"You just don't understand!" The Freedom lined up its guns for another full burst; the Zulfiqar dodged again and shot down another DRAGOON as it did. Kira ground his teeth and tightened his DRAGOON fire around the Zulfiqar, singing its armor with glancing hits. One of them slammed through the Zulfiqar's beam rifle.

Shinn abandoned the weapon, blasted through the barrage, and drew his sword—and with a devastating downward chop, he slashed one of the DRAGOONs in half. Another two lined up behind him, only to be evaporated by the beam wings—and then the Zulfiqar charged forward with a hard diagonal sword swing. Kira backed away in surprise and fired back with the two Callidus cannons; the Zulfiqar darted aside amid a storm of afterimages and the blasts passed through nothing.

"You should know, of all people, that this world has to be changed!" Kira cried; the Zulfiqar wove its way through the Freedom's beam blasts. One of the DRAGOONs sliced in behind it; Shinn whirled around to snare it out of the sky with the Zulfiqar's free left hand and crush it, then hurl the broken pieces away. "You should understand what I'm doing here!" The two surviving DRAGOONs arced around and opened fire; Shinn darted over their blasts again, then lunged down between them and sawed them both in half with the beam wings. "I'm paving the way to a new world—and if it has to be paved in blood, then so be it!"

The Zulfiqar charged after the Freedom and ducked away from its furious fire. "What the hell could possibly be worth all this slaughter?!"

Kira's eye flashed as he brought his guns to bear. "A world where people like us don't have to fight!"

The Zulfiqar charged forward with a flash of afterimages and sliced both the Freedom's beam rifles in two with one sweeping swing. Kira darted backward and drew a beam saber, then jammed it upward to deflect the Zulfiqar's downward sword blow. The two Gundams glowered into each other's eyes as the sparks flew and their beam wings blazed.

"I think we both know that's a load of horseshit," Shinn snarled, and the two Gundams descended back into battle.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Far up ahead stretched the vast hull of the _Rodinia_. The _Charlemagne_ was almost as long as that massive green warship, but the ZAFT flagship was much more massive—and surrounded by its fair share of ZAFT warships and innumerable mobile suits.

Ivan Danilov steeled himself on the _Charlemagne_'s bridge. "All units, commence long-range bombardment!" he ordered. "Accelerate to attack speed!"

The ZAFT fleet shuddered as it opened fire and the mobile suits advanced under a wall of railgun shells, beams, and missiles from their motherships. The Alliance and Resistance mobile suits struggled through the blasts—at least until their own warships opened fire, and the two fleets staggered apart as the first salvos claimed their victims.

And then another beam swept through the battlefield, this one from up above. A translucent column of light lanced down from the round dish in the center of Messiah, and Danilov felt his heart drop into his stomach as the NEO-GENESIS array blasted away dozens of ships and hundreds of mobile suits.

"What the—how the hell did they fire that thing so quickly?" the sensor officer sputtered.

Danilov ground his teeth as he fought down his own disbelief. "The recharge rate must be faster than we expected." He glanced up at the auxiliary screen. "Admiral Barton..."

The grizzled Resistance admiral in his blue naval uniform glowered back. "We saw it. All units, prepare to pull back."

Danilov looked back at the fleet before them, at the massive ZAFT carrier, at the hulking form of Messiah behind them all, beam shield shimmering amidst the battle. "We don't have time for complicated maneuvers, admiral," he said. "Try spreading out the fleet's formation, so that they can't take out as many of us in one hit. We can't afford to retreat again."

Barton's brow furrowed. "We have no choice, Captain Danilov. We have no countermeasures against such a weapon—"

"Then move us closer," Danilov interrupted. "Move as close as you can and engage the ZAFT warships at point-blank range!"

At that, Barton blinked in disbelief. "At point-blank—have you gone mad? At that close range we won't last five minutes against that fleet!"

Danilov fixed his eyes ahead on the ZAFT flagship—and the sinister fortress it protected. "We'll last longer than we will against the NEO-GENESIS," he snapped, "and we might just take a few of them with us!"

—

"Already it's all going to pot, huh?" asked Sting Oakley with a bitter grin as the Fujin Gundam roared ahead, with the Kali and Marduk Gundams right behind him—and an army of Alliance and Resistance mobile suits still advancing even through the ZAFT fleet's bitter fire. Auel lunged up in front of the advancing Gundams to deflect a volley of beams with the Geschmeidig Panzer system; Sting and Stella darted out from behind him to fire back at a squad of incoming ZAKUs and tear them apart before they could react.

"Figures they'd fuck things up right out of the gate," Auel grumbled.

Sting switched over to a wide frequency. "Alright, listen up! The warships are being held back by intense fire—so all units, move forward and start making some holes! Anyone who breaks through attacks that big green ship next!" He clenched his fists around the controls. "_Move out!_"

The mobile suits roared forward and the ZAFT units backed away in surprise as a devastating wall of firepower slammed into their ranks. Sting launched the gunbarrels forward to pry open a hole in the ZAFT lines; a squad of Gunner ZAKUs backed away and leveled off their cannons to stop him, but the Kali Gundam vaulted into their ranks and tore one of them in half with a backhanded saber blow. The rest scattered, clawing for distance—and the Fujin's gunbarrels blew them out of the sky.

Another squadron of mobile suits moved in from above—at least until the Marduk Gundam opened fire with its beam guns and wiped out half of them in one attack. The rest fell back under fire from the advancing Alliance and Resistance mobile suits. Sting recalled his gunbarrels and scanned the battlefield briefly, looking for an opening.

"Hey," a voice he recognized somewhere in the back of his mind piped up, "you weren't going anywhere without us, were you?"

A whole squadron of Resistance mobile suits fell into formation next to the Fujin—and Sting blinked in surprise at the sight of a blue and white Windam with an Aile Striker pack. Gregory Hayden smiled grimly on the auxiliary screen.

"You're still alive?" Sting sputtered.

"Should I not be?" Hayden asked back. "Besides which, I think we've got bigger things to worry about." The Windam pointed up ahead, at the oncoming hulk of a _Laurasia_-class frigate and a squadron of mobile suits on its flanks.

"Oh, that's easy," Auel sneered. The Marduk rushed forward and unleashed a blazing salvo from its beam guns that raked across the warship's hull and sent it shuddering back, wreathed in flames. The Kali lined up behind the Marduk for a volley of beam sniper rifle blasts; two of the mobile suits up ahead exploded.

Sting glanced past the enemies, towards the massive ZAFT flagship. "Alright then, Hayden," he said, "we're leaving this shit to you. Watch our backs."

Hayden smiled back. "Of course."

The Fujin, Kali, and Marduk charged down into the fray, and Auel deflected the frigate's blasts with his Geschmeidig Panzer as the three Gundams rocketed by. Some of the surviving mobile suits turned to pursue, but Hayden and his troops fell upon them immediately, and Sting, Stella, and Auel slipped past on their way towards the flagship.

—

The Judgment Gundam soared down through the chaos of battle towards the ZAKU Goliath, still advancing relentlessly towards the Earth. It had already wiped out several cities, and obliterated dozens of warships and hundreds of mobile suits that had tried to stop it. Chatter from the Atlantic Federation forces seemed to indicate that they were trying to repair the Requiem and find enough Forbidden-derivative units in space to deploy the Geschmeidig Panzer and try to simulate the relay points. But that would be useless anyways, because the Goliath's shimmering beam shield could only be pierced by another beam shield.

And luck of lucks, the Judgment had two.

Rau Le Creuset examined the battlefield for the presences he needed. There was Emily's intense pressure, growing ever closer; down below were Valentine and that _other_ point, close enough for his own fine-tuned perception to detect. They would have to coax Zero-Two out of hiding, but as long as he was close by to guide Emily in the right direction after the inevitable occurred—

But...then there was that _other_ pressure. Rau glanced over his shoulder. Athrun.

_You're still too late..._ He immediately opened a channel to the Eclipse—and only the Eclipse. No sense letting those other two loose ends in on this. "Emily, Zero-Two is inside that thing," he said.

Emily took a deep breath. "I know. We have to get her out." She frowned. "Who's the other Newtype in there?"

"Sunogachi," answered Rau. "She's not important. Remember what I told you." The Judgment moved in alongside the Eclipse, the Green Frame Kai, and the Twilight Cortana as they descended towards the Goliath. "Remember Anori, Emily. Remember what we talked about."

She blinked down at the Goliath. "Wh-what does this have to do with it?"

"Everything," Rau said. "That machine is power. More power than any of us have. And you know what I told you about power. It's a means to an end. And that thing," the Judgment pointed down at the ZAKU Goliath, "is a most powerful means."

Emily frowned. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that you will have the power to change all of this, if you were to have power over that machine."

"So...you want me to capture it?"

"Think of what you can do with it," Rau insisted. "Think of what changes you can bring. You can destroy the entire ZAFT fleet singlehandedly. You can destroy the Phantom Pain yourself. If you don't trust Robert Meyers, you can destroy him."

He blinked in surprise as he felt her steel herself. "Not until we get Zero-Two out."

"Well, of course—"

"And when we do," Emily said, "I'll just destroy that thing."

Rau felt a chill run down his spine. "What do you mean?"

The Eclipse pointed down at the Goliath—as it wiped out an oncoming warship and a squadron of Alliance mobile suits. "The only thing that machine can do is destroy," she said. "And you said it yourself, Rau. It's not about what you destroy. It's what you build in its place."

"That's true," Rau replied, "but first you have to destroy—"

"I've got something else to do first," Emily said—and with that, the screen went dark and the Eclipse roared forward, with the Green Frame and Cortana hot on its heels.

Rau stared after her in disbelief. _It's not about what you destroy, it's about what you build—how on earth did she get to _that_ conclusion?!_

He snapped his attention to the right and flung the Judgment Gundam back as a wave of beams shot past—and then the pressure returned to his mind as the Celestial Justice and Aurora Gundams transformed and came to a halt in front of him, beam rifles trained on the Judgment.

"So," said Athrun Zala, fire in his eyes, "what happens when the puppeteer's strings are cut?"

Rau's eyes darted back and forth between the two Gundams between him and the one charging down towards the Goliath. She had rejected him? Rejected his way forward?

But he turned his senses back towards Zero-Two, the twisted, shriveled heart still beating inside the iron walls of the ZAKU Goliath. No, she hadn't rejected him. She just had yet to realize how right he was. But she would, once reality struck her in the face. And in the meantime...

"I see you brought your little girlfriend," he sneered.

Viveka von Oldendorf scowled back. "If you thought my little sister was going to take over that thing and demolish the planet, you sure didn't know her that well."

"Besides, don't you know?" Athrun added, menace dripping from his voice. "Nobody controls the Angel of Death."

Rau grinned back. "Indeed. And I hope you remember that, Athrun, for when she finally breaks. When she finally realizes that she can't save that little clone. Because when she does, the whole world will pay the price for its crimes."

"I think you underestimate her strength," Athrun shot back.

"And I think you underestimate mine," answered Rau.

The Aurora and Justice opened fire; the Judgment darted aside and launched its DRAGOONs, and the three Gundams charged at each other amid a hail of beams.

—

The Zulfiqar rattled as the Vega Freedom Gundam pummeled it with a head-on railgun blast. Shinn hacked through the smoke—just in time for the Freedom to fire its two Callidus cannons. Shinn threw the Zulfiqar back, but one of the shots still burned past the right side of the Zulfiqar's head, leaving a smoldering scar. He lunged up as the Freedom fired again with its plasma cannons, letting it catch only afterimages, and then came back down with a hard overhead sword swing.

"A world where Newtypes use their powers for good," Kira growled, "a world where our sacrifices were worth it! Why don't you understand that?!"

Shinn charged forward after the reeling Freedom, then darted aside to dodge another Callidus and plasma cannon salvo. "Alright, fine! What's worth all these 'sacrifices,' huh?! Tell me!" The Zulfiqar stormed in with another hard sword swing, but the Freedom jammed up its saber to block the blow.

"A world of Newtypes, where our powers foster understanding and control!" Kira answered. "A world where _everyone_ has to feel what _we_ feel when people die!"

"Is that why _you're_ killing everyone?!" Shinn flung the Freedom forward with his sword. "That's just an excuse! If you really were after a world of Newtypes, you wouldn't be doing it this way! You're just enabling a psychopath!"

"No! You're wrong!" Kira screamed back, and the Freedom ducked beneath the Zulfiqar's furious sword blow. It swung its saber up to slice off the Zulfiqar's left leg at the knee—but an instant later, the Zulfiqar itself whirled around to slam the Freedom back with yet another sword swing.

The Freedom wheeled around with its plasma cannons and railguns deployed, but instead the Zulfiqar reared back and flung both its beam boomerangs down into the Freedom's face, and the whirling blades sliced off the plasma cannons and the Callidus cannons as they arced around. And then the Zulfiqar was there again to bring down its sword onto the smoking Freedom's beam saber as the boomerangs spiraled away into the night.

"You're wrong!" Kira shouted—and his eyes went dull as the seed burst before them. "My new world won't be like that at all!"

"Your new world, huh?" Shinn shot back. "What makes you think the world belongs to you?!"

The Freedom surged forward and threw the Zulfiqar back. "I don't see _you_ trying to improve the world!" The white Gundam barreled forward and pounded the Zulfiqar in the face with another railgun salvo. "All you've done is run around and killed people, in the name of a Resistance that you know is as bad as its enemies! What were you going to do after you'd killed Djibril?! Run away and hide?!" The Freedom spiraled around one of the Zulfiqar's sword blows and brought its saber up in a backhanded swing that tore a smoldering gash in the Zulfiqar's chest. "That would be just like you, wouldn't it, Traitor Asuka?!"

"At least I haven't been killing the _wrong_ people!" Shinn screamed back, and the Zulfiqar smashed its sword down into the Freedom's saber, sending it reeling. Kira angled around for a kick with the Freedom's left leg to knock the Zulfiqar off balance; instead, Shinn slammed his open left hand onto the limb and blew it apart below the knee with a palm cannon blast. "Which is more than I can say about _you!_"

Kira darted away with another railgun blast and hefted his beam saber. "You never did understand the concept of necessity, did you?"

Shinn pointed his sword combatively at the Freedom. "And _you_ never understood the concept of humility."

"You're wrong," Kira snarled back. "Wrong about everything. And especially about me—"

"I don't give a fuck if you feel bad about what you've done," Shinn interrupted. "You still did it."

That seemed to strike a chord and Kira took a moment to bury a surge of emotion. "How I feel isn't important," Kira said. "What is important is what I leave for the future." The Freedom blasted forward, saber held high. "_Which is something you'll never do!_"

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"Deeper into the Debris Belt," Meyrin ordered, even as the _Minerva_ shook under exploding shells from the pursuing _Fortuna_. "We're going to need wreckage around us."

"We'll have to reduce our speed," Abbey warned.

Meyrin shook her head. "Negative. Stay at flank speed."

Down at the helm, Malik blinked. "Wha—flank speed, while navigating the Debris Belt—?"

"You're not the _Minerva_'s helmsman for nothing, Malik," Meyrin said. "This is where it counts."

Malik stared down at the helm for a second—and then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yes ma'am."

Abbey frowned. "What are you planning?"

"That ship has all the same strengths and weaknesses we have," Meyrin said. "It's as fast as we are, it has the same armaments, the same sensor suite—but it doesn't have the same crew." She glanced up at the auxiliary screen, where the _Fortuna_ was still blithely charging after the _Minerva_, guns blazing. The _Fortuna_'s Tristans opened fire; the _Minerva_ nosed under a piece of debris and let the blasts slam into the wreckage above uselessly. "So, if they want to fight a war on our turf, let them. It's still our turf."

Abbey stared skeptically at the _Fortuna_'s image. "Assuming they're as inexperienced as you think. And that's their second-in-command's flagship. He wouldn't have chosen a bunch of greenhorns."

"No," Meyrin said, "but he didn't choose the best there are. All ahead full, Malik. Chen, keep the weapons ready to fire on my mark."

She closed her eyes for a moment as the _Minerva_ plunged into the Debris Belt, followed by relentless fire and the blue-trimmed _Fortuna_. _Talia, Luna, if you two can hear me, help me out,_ she thought. _Let me be what they say I am._

—

Stella Loussier clenched her fists around the Kali Gundam's controls as she sped into battle with the Fujin and Marduk Gundams—and with whatever Alliance and Resistance mobile suits and warships had managed to force their way through the ZAFT lines. The two fleets had melted together into an undifferentiated melee that would hopefully keep NEO-GENESIS from firing. The battle was on a knife's edge now. Surely they wouldn't want to go frying their own troops.

At least, that was what Sting had said. Stella had her doubts. A lot of people didn't seem to mind blowing up their friends. That was what made them evil, or, one of the things, at least.

The three Gundams darted apart from a salvo of beams and let their escorts return fire. Stella turned her eyes up ahead, towards the gigantic green warship that the Alliance troops said the ZAFT troops were calling the _Rodinia_. It made little difference to Stella. She had to destroy it.

The Kali pitched forward and fired at the oncoming ZAFT mobile suits with its beam rifle. One of them was speared through the cockpit on a blast, but the rest broke formation and pulled back, a wall of beam fire lancing out towards the Gundams. Auel unleashed a full salvo of beam blasts to drive them further back, and blow up a couple more.

"All we have to do is destroy the weapons," Sting said, "and then the _Charlemagne_ can blow it away."

"As long as we can _reach_ the fucking thing!" barked Auel, and the Marduk shuddered under a hail of beam fire. "Dammit, these things are everywhere!"

"Stella will deal with them." And with that, the Kali vaulted forward with a beam saber blazing to life in its left hand. Up ahead, a squad of ZAKUs backpedaled and began to fire; the Marduk silenced their guns with a flurry of beams, and the Kali lunged down into their ranks and ripped one of them in half with a backhanded beam saber swipe. The other three brought their guns to bear on the black Gundam; the Fujin's gunbarrels lanced into the fight and destroyed another. Stella danced through the two survivors' beams and shot one of them down with a beam rifle blast to the cockpit—and the last backed away in apparent terror, only to be sliced in half by the Marduk's beam naginata.

"Alright," Sting said, "Auel, you cover us both. I'll take the starboard side. Stella, you take port." He narrowed his eyes at the massive _Rodinia_. "Go!"

—

Up ahead loomed the ZAKU Goliath, and Emily immediately cringed at the sight of it swatting an entire Euclid mobile armor aside like a fly. There were dozens of mobile suits surrounding the red monstrosity now, but Emily felt no human presences from them, and decided that they must be yet more automated units. But these sleek, slim, winged versions of the ZAKU Warrior, colored in black with blazing green monoeyes, were so much more nimble and moved with the kind of precision and timing of DRAGOONs.

Emily armed the Dragon's Fire and charged ahead, with the Green Frame Kai and Twilight Cortana on her flanks. The three Gundams darted apart as the ZAKU Drones up ahead opened fire; Emily swung up the Dragon's Fire launcher and fired, and the blazing blue beam swept through three of them at once and disintegrated them all. The Green Frame shot down another, and the Cortana's DRAGOONs lashed out to take down another two.

The survivors rocketed back into formation and went on the attack. Emily jammed on the brakes and deployed her beam shield, just in time to deflect a beam salvo. The Green Frame and Cortana took cover behind their own beam shields; the Drones charged again, rifles blazing.

"Okay, so they _are_ just really big DRAGOONs," Emily muttered.

"What—but those are whole mobile suits!" wailed Lily. The Cortana shuddered as a storm of blasts slammed into its beam shield.

"Cover me!" Emily shouted—and the Eclipse rocketed forward with a storm of afterimages flickering around it. The Green Frame and Cortana leveled off their guns and opened fire; the Drones broke ranks, but the Eclipse was upon them to sweep its glowing Dragon's Tail heat rod through two of them. The rest quickly backpedaled; the Eclipse darted upward and blew another two away with the Dragon's Fire, then rocketed to the side and left a blurry wake of afterimages.

Far ahead, the ZAKU Goliath marched on, and Emily grimaced as she fought her way through the Drones. So much to go through, and they still had to drag Zero-Two out...

—

The battlefield flashed as the Judgment Gundam's DRAGOONs darted to and fro, spewing beams at the Celestial Justice and Aurora Gundams. Athrun ground his teeth in frustration as he swatted the blasts aside with his beam shield, lined up his rifle, and fired at the Judgment's main body; the gray and blue Gundam ducked to the right and fired back a full burst from its mounted guns that sent the Justice careening off course.

A moment later, the Aurora rocketed down into the Judgment and drove it back on the defensive with a torrent of plasma cannon shots. Rau whipped around on the red Gundam and opened fire again; the DRAGOONs pelted the Aurora with beam fire and Viveka bit back a curse as she backed away behind her beam shield.

"It's funny," Rau Le Creuset said with a chuckle. "You two aren't that different from me, really—"

"Don't waste your breath on _that_ horseshit," Athrun snarled. The Judgment wheeled around on the Justice with another beam salvo; Athrun scowled as one of the beams claimed his rifle. He flung the useless weapon away before it exploded, drew both his sabers, slammed them together at the ends, and charged forward with a sweeping swipe from his double-bladed saber. The Aurora backed him up with another salvo of plasma cannon blasts as the Judgment backed away. "I'm not the one acting like I have the right to pass judgment on the world!"

The Judgment charged back with a beam saber of its own blazing alight in its hand, and the two Gundams met with a crash of blades and a shower of sparks. "Oh, but I have _every_ right!" Rau roared. "These fallen creatures will never come to their senses on their own, after all!"

"So you complain that the world used you and threw you away, then you do the same to others?!" Athrun snapped. The Justice surged forward and flung the Judgment back; the Aurora lunged up from behind, beam rifle ready, but Rau quickly whipped around and sawed it in two, then drove the Aurora back with a point-blank full burst to the beam shield. He turned again and brought down his saber to deflect the Justice's horizontal blow towards the Judgment's waist. "You're nothing but a hypocrite!"

Rau merely shrugged. "I use the tools I'm given, little Athrun. And there's some delicious irony in it all anyway!" The Judgment backflipped over the Aurora as it took a swing with its own beam saber at the gray Gundam's exposed back; the DRAGOONs swarmed in and drove both mobile suits apart. "The Cosmic Era, that time in history when humans reduced each other to refuse and weapons, destroyed by its own grandest creations!" The Judgment rained beams on the Justice and Aurora with its mounted guns. "They dared to create an Ultimate Coordinator, and now their hubris returns to destroy them; they dared to create an Angel of Death, and now they face a force they could never control!" He grinned malevolently. "And then you two, standing here, trying to stop me—as though _I'm_ the one you should be worrying about!"

"Jesus, you _are_ nuts," Viveka grumbled.

"You've had your run," Athrun said, "and now it's time for _you_ to answer for _your_ crimes."

Rau smiled back. "Then come and claim your justice, Athrun."

The Justice and Aurora raised their sabers and charged.

—

"You think you're going to build a world of Newtypes?!" screamed Shinn Asuka, as the Zulfiqar stormed in close and slammed the Vega Freedom back with a hard horizontal sword blow. Kira lunged over the next one, then came back down with a hard kick to the Zulfiqar's head with its remaining leg. It lined up for a railgun blast; the Zulfiqar darted aside, then rushed in again, and the Freedom jammed its saber upward to deflect the sword blow. "You think you can build a better world just by killing people?!"

Kira glowered back. "The only way people change is when they're forced to, by enormous suffering, at enormous cost!" The Zulfiqar flung the Freedom back and charged again. It raised its railguns—only for the Zulfiqar to charge and slash them both in two. Kira stabbed forward with his saber and tore another gash into the Zulfiqar's chest. "That was how I learned to pilot mobile suits. That was how _you_ learned to use your Newtype powers. That was how your friend Emily survived. So why should the rest of the world be any different?!" The Freedom drove its knee up into the Zulfiqar's chest and sent it reeling back. "The world only makes sense when you _force_ it to!"

The Freedom closed in with its saber drawn back for a final blow—but Shinn suddenly darted away and quickly deployed the long-range cannon. Kira jammed the controls to the right, but not before the cannon fired and a coursing red blast slammed into the Freedom's left shoulder and blew away the entire arm. Kira charged forward with a shout and brought his saber down into the Zulfiqar's left elbow, and with a burst of fire, he severed the Zulfiqar's arm at the elbow and destroyed the long-range cannon in a blaze. Shinn burst through the smoke and brought down his sword, but the Freedom's saber was there to block the attack.

"The world only makes sense when you force it to, huh?" Shinn asked, eyes dull as the seed fell before them. "That's pretty funny, coming from you." Kira narrowed his eye in anticipation. "Because if it weren't for you, _my_ world would _still make sense!_"

The Zulfiqar flung the Freedom back with its sword and went back on the attack.

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

The _Charlemagne_ trembled as one of the _Drake_-class destroyers off the starboard bow snapped in two and exploded. Up ahead, the _Rodinia_ fired back with no less than eight powerful Tristan cannons—and the blasts raked across the fleet and tore another destroyer out of the sky.

"Captain, our fleet is getting decimated," Vera spoke up. "We can't even maneuver them anymore—"

"Those Gundams will break through," Danilov said. "We've got to give them more time. Gottfrieds, Valiants, intensify power, now!"

The _Charlemagne_ rumbled as the Gottfried cannons and Valiant railguns came to life and hurled a wall of firepower into the oncoming ZAFT forces. Two warships buckled under the blow and a dozen mobile suits vanished in the inferno, but the rest emerged with negligible damage. Another storm rushed out from the _Charlemagne_'s weapons, but this time the ZAFT units skirted around the blasts and held their ground.

"Danilov," one of the Alliance officers sputtered from the auxiliary screen, "we're getting torn apart! We can't—" The screen went dark and Danilov cringed as he saw another Alliance warship explode out of the corner of his eye.

The weapons officer sat up at his post. "Captain, Lohengrins are ready to fire—"

"Not yet," Danilov said. _Come on, Gundams..._

—

A thunderous explosion claimed one of the jet-black ZAKU Drones as the Gundam Eclipse ran its beam sword through the nimble mobile suit's waist. The black Gundam snaked its way through a hurricane of beam fire and charged towards another knot of Drones up above. The mobile suits darted apart—but the Twilight Cortana was there to pummel them with blasts from its DRAGOONs, and two shots from the Cortana's long-range cannons wiped out three of the Drones at once.

"There's so many of these damn things!" Lily wailed. The Cortana rattled as blasts slammed into its beam shield.

The Green Frame squeezed off a shot that speared a Drone through the chest—but two more rose to take its place and drive the Green Frame back. "Emily, we're not getting anywhere like this!" shouted Trojan.

Emily's eyes flashed with frustration as a burst of beam fire cut her off. "In that case..."

The Eclipse charged forward; the Drones fired back, forcing her to weave her way through the shots. Undaunted, the Eclipse barreled through their salvos and stormed down towards their tightening ranks.

"_I'll even the odds myself!_"

A storm of white energy erupted in the Eclipse's cockpit—and a moment later, dozens of the remaining Drones turned their guns on their wing mates. The Eclipse plowed through the inferno and angled for the ZAKU Goliath as the Drones descended into shooting at each other.

Back in the Cortana, Lily blinked in disbelief as their problem rapidly took care of itself. "She...she can _do_ that?" She immediately put on a pout. "No fair! How come _I_ can't do that?!"

"Come on," Trojan said, "you can bitch at her for it later!" The Green Frame and Cortana took off after the Eclipse, charging towards the imposing ZAKU Goliath in the distance.

—

Athrun Zala grimaced as one of the Judgment Gundam's Knight DRAGOONs claimed the Celestial Justice's right leg just above the knee. He rocketed forward anyway and launched one of his anchors forward to snare the Judgment's beam rifle, then yank it out of the gray Gundam's grip. Rau bit back a curse and warded the Justice off with a web of DRAGOON fire—just in time for the Aurora Gundam to sweep in and chop off the Judgment's left leg at the knee. The Judgment responded with a searing barrage from its mounted guns that blew off the dodging Aurora's own left leg at the knee and entire left arm.

"Ah, so the failed Oldendorf sister would like to play too!" Rau snarled, and the DRAGOONs lashed out at the crimson Gundam. Rau whirled around, beam saber in hand, and swatted aside the Justice's own saber strike from behind. "I'd think you should be more worried about little Emily!"

"She can take care of herself!" Viveka snapped back.

"Really now!" Rau cackled; he drove a knee up into the Justice's chest, then spun around to pummel the Aurora with beam fire. The red Gundam ducked between the blasts and closed in, and with a hard backhanded saber blow, it slashed out the Judgment's chest-mounted Callidus cannon. Rau darted to the side as the Justice charged up from behind with a saber stab and showered the two Gundams with DRAGOON fire. "I've been spending quite some time recently making sure that she _can't!_"

"Yes, that's what you do, isn't it?!" Athrun snarled. The Justice launched its Fatum-02 subflight lifter skyward; the machine spread its wings and claws and darted down towards the Judgment with a burst of beam fire. "Always spreading your misery around, as though nobody else in the world has to suffer the way you do!" Rau spiraled away from it; the Aurora charged up towards him, but he batted aside its saber blow, then turned to deflect another attack from the Justice. "Always bitching about how the world used you, while you use other people! While you turn them into _monsters!_"

Rau grinned back even as he dodged the fire from the subflight lifter and the Aurora. "Kira Yamato was _always_ a monster, Athrun Zala!" he laughed. "All I did was throw his true nature into the light!"

The Justice charged forward and slammed the Judgment back with a hard horizontal saber blow. "He was never a monster until _you_ got to him!" Athrun screamed. The subflight lifter came whirling down with snapping claws at the Judgment's back, and Rau jetted from side to side as the flying machine gave chase. "He was compassionate and he knew right from wrong until _you_ came along!"

"Oh, that was hardly _my_ doing!" Rau shot back. "All I did was take an aimless man and give him purpose! It was Valentine who turned him into what he is now!"

"_Excuses!_" roared Athrun, and the Justice rammed its shoulder hard into the Judgment's chest. Rau fired back with the mounted guns and tore away flaming chunks of the Justice's armor—but then the Aurora slammed into the Judgment from the side and threw it off. The DRAGOONs rushed in to attack, but Viveka spiraled her way through the blasts and then slashed off the beam cannon embedded in the Judgment's remaining knee. Rau turned his guns towards her, but the subflight lifter intervened with a storm of beam fire that drove the Judgment back.

"Believe what you want, Athrun," Rau said, "but the truth is the truth!" He backflipped over the Aurora's plasma cannon fire and answered it in spades. As the Aurora backed away, the DRAGOONs went to work—and then the Judgment itself barreled forward and slashed off both the Aurora's plasma cannons. The smoldering stumps exploded; the Aurora went reeling; Rau closed in for a killing blow—

And then the Judgment stopped cold as the Justice threw itself into the way and slapped its saber aside with a quick counterattack. The Judgment staggered back and drew a beam saber in its left hand—just in time for the Justice to sever its left arm at the elbow with a lightning-quick beam blade-assisted kick.

Rau flung the Judgment back with a burst of fire from the DRAGOONs and mounted guns, forcing the Aurora and Justice apart. "Even if you kill me here, your victory will be meaningless!" he cried. "The instant Emily realizes she can't save that little clone of hers, _none_ of you will be able to stop her!"

Viveka scowled back as she closed in, saber blazing. "Then you _really_ don't know her!"

—

With a final shudder, the Marduk Gundam lined up its guns for a punishing full burst of firepower. The beams slammed through an oncoming squadron of ZAFT mobile suits and tore them to pieces. Auel smirked with satisfaction as his allies streamed through the breach, and he turned the guns towards their flanks to ward off the ZAFT units trying to close their line.

Up ahead loomed a handful of ZAFT warships—and behind them was the massive _Rodinia_. Already it was bringing its guns to bear again on the Alliance and Resistance fleet. A _Nazca_-class destroyer moved up to attack; Auel deflected its blasts with the Geschmeidig Panzer, but the Marduk began to strain under the pressure of redirecting such powerful bolts.

A moment later, flashes of light flared up around the destroyer's hull—and the Fujin Gundam's gunbarrels swarmed around the ship, peppering its hull with beam blasts. The mobile suits struggled to keep up, but the Fujin's gunbarrels tore black gashes into the _Nazca_'s hull—just in time for the Alliance and Resistance mobile suits to focus their firepower on it and shred it in a relentless crossfire.

Auel glanced up ahead and charged through the opening as the _Nazca_ exploded. "There we go!" he shouted. "There's a breach! Move your asses, people!"

The Marduk roared forward, beam naginata flashing to life, and charged down towards the exposed _Rodinia_ as the fleet inched forward.

—

Beam saber met anti-ship sword as the sparking Vega Freedom and Zulfiqar Gundams battled their way across the black sky, afterimages flickering around them. Shinn brought his sword around in a hard uppercut that sent the Freedom staggering back.

"You come here and bullshit me about some 'better world' you want to make," he snarled, "and then you have the nerve to lecture me about _sacrifices!_" The Zulfiqar brought down another bone-rattling hit to the Freedom's saber. "What the hell do _you_ know about _sacrifices?!_"

The Freedom jetted back from the Zulfiqar's next swing, then rocketed down into its face for a stab towards its cockpit. The Zulfiqar somersaulted to the right and then gave the Freedom a hard kick to the face to knock it back. Shinn charged forward, sword upraised, but the Freedom managed to bring its saber around in time to block the blow.

"I know enough—" Kira started.

"_The hell you do!_" Shinn roared. "_I'm_ the one who's been sacrificing, because of _you!_" The Zulfiqar used its sword to fling the Freedom back, and went on the attack again. "You took my parents from me, you took Mayu, you took Kika, you took Mev and George and all the rest, you took Lacus—so what the hell have _you_ ever lost?!"

The Freedom ducked down as the Zulfiqar swung again, then charged up and tried to bring his saber around through the Zulfiqar's exposed back. Shinn whipped around, sword in hand, to deflect the blow.

"I've lost someone important to me too," Kira shot back, "and that's why I'm doing this!" He surged forward and pushed the Zulfiqar back in front of him. "To make sure she didn't die for nothing!"

Shinn's eyes flashed with fury. "So you'll just kill everyone because someone you cared about died?!"

"_You're wrong!_" shrieked Kira, and the Freedom hurled the Zulfiqar back. Shinn maneuvered his sword up to deflect another saber strike. "_It's not like that!_" The Freedom kept up its attack. "I'll make a world where we can be together again!"

"Oh, so that's what this was all about!" Shinn shouted back. "You're just crazy!"

Kira's eye flickered with rage. "_Shut the hell up!_"

"Because if there's one thing _you_ taught me, you crazy son of a bitch," Shinn went on, as the Zulfiqar and Freedom circled each other and threw sparks, "it's that you can't bring back the dead!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

"Missiles, sir!" the sensor officer cried.

Lyle tensed in the captain's seat. "CIWS, shoot them down!"

The _Fortuna_'s CIWS emplacements tore the _Minerva_'s missiles out of the inky sky, and the blue and gray warship shook as the projectiles prematurely detonated. So much of this wreckage was still fresh that infrared sensors were of no use in here. But the _Minerva_ had run away into this vast mess.

At the XO's station, Morales leaned forward, a hand thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "Maybe they have a trap out here...?"

"There's no way they could have set one up out here," Lyle said with a dismissive wave. "This wreckage is too new."

"But we're out of our element, sir," Morales protested. "They've been here for three years, and the Debris Belt was always the Resistance's turf."

Lyle scowled ahead at the wreckage, eyes darting back and forth for any sign of the _Minerva_. "We won't let a bunch of Natural rejects and race-traitors best us here," he said. "Not with the Marshal depending on us. Sensors, find them and lock on. They won't get away again."

—

The Kali Gundam skimmed along the vast surface of the _Rodinia_ and elegantly dodged a furious storm of beam fire from ZAFT units overhead. A GOUF Ignited dropped down into the Kali's path, beam sword shining to life; the Kali's saber deflected the GOUF's blows with expert precision, just long enough for the Fujin Gundam's gunbarrels to lance across the battlefield and tear the GOUF apart.

Stella plunged through the flames and leveled off her beam rifle at the _Rodinia_'s row of portside Tristan cannons. The first one ticked towards her, but too late; the Kali opened fire and speared the cannon on a pair of blasts, blowing it apart. The next one opened fire; Stella vaulted off the ship's hull and destroyed it as well, and the third and fourth fell victim to other Alliance and Resistance units' fire as they were distracted by the nimble black Gundam.

"Portside is open!" she shouted. "All units, get back!" She threw a switch on the Kali's console. "Danilov—"

Ivan Danilov nodded grimly. "All units, clear out from _Rodinia_ now! Requiem X2—_fire!_"

The Alliance and Resistance units scattered and Stella backed away...just as a blazing column of golden light erupted from the _Charlemagne_'s massive prow. The shimmering beam plowed through space and smashed into the _Rodinia_'s disarmed port side, then drilled its way out the starboard stern. The _Rodinia_ bucked as though hit with a fist, flames and smoke began to rush out of its catapults and battle scars—and then the massive ship fell back and vanished in an explosion that rattled Stella's teeth.

"And that," Auel said with a satisfied grin, "is the end of that!"

"Not quite," Sting said, and the Fujin pointed beyond the flaming wreckage as it recalled its gunbarrels.

Beyond them all lay Messiah, its own beam shield still lit. Stella narrowed her eyes at it.

"All units, continue the advance," Danilov ordered. "Our next target is Messiah!"

—

The Judgment Gundam's DRAGOONs blazed through the black sky and hurled a wall of firepower into the charging Celestial Justice and Aurora Gundams. One of the blasts claimed the Aurora's right wing and sent the red mobile suit spiraling off course; Rau turned the Judgment's mounted guns on it, but before he could fire, the Justice's subflight lifter rushed into the path and drove him back with a storm of beam fire.

"You'll see!" he cackled, as the beams seared the Justice's armor. The subflight lifter spiraled through the blasts and fired back, but the Judgment easily dodged and then deflected a saber stroke from the Justice. "She'll break down, at long last, and the whole world will finally understand the depths of its crimes!"

The Justice snaked its way through the DRAGOON fire and descended into another swordfight with the Judgment. "For a Newtype, you sure do have no idea what humans are like!" Athrun shot back.

"And I suppose you're going to defend these worthless creatures?!" The Judgment surged forward and drove the Justice back.

"Just because _you_ have no future," Athrun answered, "_does not mean the rest of us don't!_"

Rau ground his teeth and bit back his fury. "Funny, coming from you," he said, "because you don't have a future either!" The Judgment slammed the Justice back, then darted aside as the subflight lifter came darting in. He whipped around and the DRAGOONs were there to rip it to shreds in a storm of beams. Athrun blinked in disbelief—and then the flames burst outward and the Judgment stormed through, beam saber held high for a killing stab—

"_Forgetting someone?!_"

And then the Aurora was there to lunge into the way and sever the Judgment's right arm at the shoulder. Rau jammed back the controls in surprise; Athrun shoved the Aurora aside and charged forward.

"You're wrong, Rau!" he roared. The Judgment's mounted guns fired, blowing away chunks of the Justice's body. "I have a future!" Rau reared back, stunned, as the Justice closed in. "_And it starts today!_"

And then, with an ear-splitting screech of twisting metal, the Justice plunged its saber into the Judgment's battle-scarred chest.

The two Gundams pitched back, pouring sparks and smoke. Rau began to laugh in the cockpit as the Judgment Gundam failed around him—and then, as it finally disappeared in a thundering inferno, Rau Le Creuset died with a maniacal cackle.

Inside the Aurora, Viveka's eye went wide in disbelief.

"_Athrun!_"

A wave of horror swept over her. He couldn't be dead; he'd said they had a future; he had plans; he had—

Something emerged from the flames...and Viveka couldn't help but smile. There floated the Justice, blackened, cratered, missing its right arm...but still in one piece.

And inside the ruined cockpit, surrounded by shrapnel and drops of blood, Athrun Zala sat back with a smile of his own.

—

"_You don't understand!_" shrieked Kira Yamato as the Zulfiqar and Vega Freedom Gundams battered each other's blades. "I'll bring her back! I'll meet her again! I'll say everything that I left unsaid! _It will all be worth this!_"

Shinn scowled back. "You insane fucking fool—"

The Freedom surged forward and knocked the Zulfiqar back. "You think I haven't suffered because of all this?!" Kira screamed. Shinn winced at the torrent of emotions flooding out of the crippled Freedom's cockpit. "You think I can't feel it when I kill these innocent people?! You think I look in the mirror and don't see a mockery of everything I used to be?!" The Freedom brought down its saber with a crash. "But when it's all done, I'll have made a world that will be _worth this!_"

Ratting under the blows, the Zulfiqar took its chance to jet backwards and then rush forward again with a hard horizontal swipe that sent the Freedom reeling. "So that's all this was about, huh? You wanted one last meeting with that person you cared about?" The Zulfiqar charged back into a swordfight with the Freedom, sparks and afterimages rippling around them. "And what about the people who _can't_ do that?! Did that ever matter to you?!"

"It'll be a world for everyone!" Kira cried.

"Everyone who's _left!_" Shinn shouted back.

The Freedom darted away from the Zulfiqar and set itself up for another charge. Shinn backed away with a blast from the engines as the Freedom closed in, then swatted it away with a hard sword blow.

"No more of this," growled Kira, his natural eye twitching with fury and stress, "I've wasted enough words with you! If you're going to get in the way of this, I'll destroy you!"

Shinn brandished his sword as he and the Freedom circled each other. "Then bring it on!" The Zulfiqar and Freedom rocketed apart, and Shinn charged forward with a scream, sword held forward for a final stab.

Kira looked up furiously at the charging Zulfiqar, ready to dart aside and run the machine through with his saber. But instead, his eye widened in disbelief as he saw an image, a figure blocking the way between himself and his foe, eyes holding nothing but sadness.

"Fllay…?"

The image vanished—Shinn screamed—

The Zulfiqar slammed its anti-ship sword through the Vega Freedom's cockpit.

Kira Yamato vanished and Shinn grimaced as he slammed the sword to the hilt through the Freedom's chest. The ruined mobile suit sputtered once before its eyes faded—and then, finally, it disappeared in a thundering fireball. Shinn screamed as the force slammed into the maimed Zulfiqar head-on...and the world went dark.

—

The ZAKU Goliath smashed through another Euclid mobile armor and fired another blast from that giant rifle into the Earth. Emily put the thought of all those people below out her mind. If she was going to stop that thing—and rescue Zero-Two—then there could be no distractions. Not even for that.

"Uh, hey Emily, those black ZAKU things are starting to come back after us," Lily spoke up.

"Let them. They'll get destroyed in the crossfire," Emily answered. Her eyes darted over the battlefield. She could feel the pinpoint of Zero-Two's presence somewhere down there, next to that other presence that Rau had told her to ignore. But was she inside the Goliath? How would they get in there? They'd have to pierce the beam shield, but—

"Hey, what's it doing now?" Trojan started.

Emily zoomed in the image and caught sight of a hatch in the ZAKU Goliath's chest swinging open. Something shot out—something silver, something shaped like a mobile suit.

All at once, it sent a massive pulsing wave of green energy her way. The Eclipse, Green Frame Kai, and Twilight Cortana darted apart to let the blast sear by. Emily fixed her eyes on the mobile suit. That thing—she recognized it—the Stargazer. The Stargazer, sporting a beam wing array and a pair of binders that held six DRAGOON units. The Stargazer, toting a huge double-barreled rifle. The Stargazer—

...with Zero-Two inside.

On the other side of the battlefield, Unit Zero-Two lifted her eyes towards the Angel of Death—and the Amaranth Gundam charged into battle.

—

To be concluded...


	50. Phase 50: Reason to Believe

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Note: Oh my holy God this thing is done.

Well, after seven or eight years or so of fanfiction, I think some thanks are in order. Firstly, I want to thank the two people who essentially functioned as my beta readers: SoreDewa and Wing Zero Alpha. They knew more about this story than anyone other than me and they were the ones who always told me when my ideas were stupid and what I should do to fix them. These fanfics evolved into what they are largely through their influence. Thanks a million, guys.

I also want to tip my hat to the readers on Mecha Talk, who weren't quite as involved in the creative process but provided all kinds of invaluable feedback all the same. I know I didn't express it much, but I really am grateful for your readership, your comments, and your feedback, be it positive, negative, neutral, or whatever else. I know this whole fanfiction series has been about as controversial as the original _Gundam SEED DESTINY_. Reading it, I suppose it marks my evolution as a writer. And we all know that's been a bumpy process, so thanks for sticking with me as long as you have.

And then there's my other readers, on FFN and elsewhere. I may not have expressed it enough to you as well, but I greatly appreciate your comments and feedback as well.

So this is it! Last chapter! Show's almost over, kids, so let's get to it.

—

Phase 50 - Reason to Believe

—

**July 7th, CE 77 - The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Admiral MacIntyre was no stranger to the cut and thrust of pitched battle. Nor was he a stranger to the peculiar feeling of helplessness that every sensible commander felt as he issued orders and thought up plans in his faraway hidden bunker and hoped they would be translated to victory on the battlefield.

The feeling of helplessness as he watched another city get vaporized by the ZAKU Goliath, however...that one was new.

"Contact lost with the substation in Geneva!" one of the soldiers below cried.

The major in charge clenched his fists as the frustration mounted. "Why the hell can't we stop that damned thing?!"

"We're not going to be the ones to stop that thing, major," MacIntyre said quietly. The major blinked at the old admiral in disbelief. "It will take someone with skill and a high-performance mobile suit. One of the _Minerva_'s Gundams."

"Then shouldn't we just redeploy our forces?" the major sputtered.

MacIntyre leaned forward, eyes fixed on the tactical map. "No," he said, "because we are here to delay that thing and give them enough time to do their work. And they won't let us down, because in this battle, they are on our side." He tapped his cane on the floor with finality. "Intensify all fire on the red giant!"

—

**Debris Belt**

It was not a waste.

Valentine Sunogachi repeated it to herself until it became a mantra. Kira Yamato's death was not a waste. He had done so much for her, so much to get her to this point. He had slain dragons and paved the road that the ZAKU Goliath now took to victory. He had done so much.

Now, the Goliath had to march on and make sure his death was not in vain. He had done so much for her, built this army for her, lifted its spirits, helped her transform it all, helped her build and maintain this cocoon of hatred that pulsed and swelled around her. She would save his memory. She would build a world for the Coordinators in his memory, build a world where their people would be safe. It would not be wasted.

The men around the control room looked to her in disbelief as the news sank in that the hero of ZAFT was dead. "Vice Marshal Yamato did not give his life so that we could stop here, on the cusp of victory," she said. "Recharge the Armageddon cannon. Next target, Paris. And get us into the atmosphere."

As the men returned to work and the Goliath's armaments washed away another force of enemy mobile suits, Valentine returned to her darkening thoughts with a scowl. It was not a waste. It would never be a waste. She would ensure it.

—

A vast column of blinding green energy came blazing out of the Amaranth Gundam's double-barreled "Gemini" weapon. The Eclipse, the Green Frame Kai, and the Twilight Cortana darted apart to let the massive blast sear by—and then an instant later, afterimages flying and the golden heat vents blazing against the black sky of space, the Amaranth itself charged into the battle. It switched the Gemini to its left hand and drew a beam saber with its right; Emily backed away and fired back with the Dragon's Fire, but the Amaranth's DRAGOONs lashed out.

Trojan and Lily wheeled around to enter the fray—but the DRAGOONs warded them off with a storm of beam fire. The Eclipse and Amaranth danced around each other's enormous beam blasts and rushed off together into the darkness, circling each other like hawks.

"Emily! Wait—" Trojan started; the DRAGOONs rocketed away after the Amaranth. The Green Frame turned to pursue—until another wave of beam shots cut them all off and forced the Green Frame and Cortana back.

"Where the hell did _they_ come from?!" Lily sputtered. Up ahead, the surviving ZAKU Drones swept down into the fight, beam rifles blazing and blocking the way after the Eclipse.

"Dammit," Trojan grunted, "fine! That's the way you want to play?! Fine! Let's go!"

Eyes flashing to life, the Green Frame and Cortana roared into the fray.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

"There they are!" Meyrin shouted. "Tristans, Isolde, _fire!_"

The _Minerva_ veered around a massive piece of wreckage, turned its guns towards the _Fortuna_, and opened fire. The Isolde shells struck home against the _Fortuna_'s hull and the ship lurched back—but then its own Tristans responded with a salvo that seared by the _Minerva_'s port wing. Malik yanked the ship to the side; the _Fortuna_'s Isolde rumbled and three shells slammed into the ship's port side, just behind the catapult doors.

"Parsifals, target the wreckage! Fire!" Meyrin ordered.

Exhaust flashed and smoke billowed around the _Minerva_ as the Parsifal air-to-surface missiles fired and lazily arced around towards the _Fortuna_. The blue and gray warship's CIWS emplacements came to life, but the missiles slammed into the wreckage around the _Fortuna_, scattering it like a shotgun blast into the oncoming battleship. The _Fortuna_ shuddered as a wall of debris slammed into it—

And then the _Minerva_ shook as a storm of missiles came slamming down into its armor. Meyrin blinked in disbelief.

"What the—sensors, where did those come from?!" she sputtered.

"I can't confirm!" Burt exclaimed. "They must have been hidden—"

"Incoming!" Malik interrupted, and yanked the ship to starboard as the battered and cratered _Fortuna_'s Tristans fired again. The blue and gray warship swept down after them with another blast from its Isolde cannon that raked across the _Minerva_'s dorsal surface.

"Damage level C," Abbey spoke up. "Captain—"

"_Heat source!_" Burt cried, and Malik instinctively sent the _Minerva_ plunging downward—

Meyrin shielded her eyes as the blinding column of a Tannhäuser blast shot by overhead, and the _Minerva_ seemed like it would shake itself apart as the antimatter annihilated everything around it, enveloping the warship in bone-jarring explosions. Meyrin clenched her fists around the armrests as the flames lashed her ship.

_Very clever, but two can play at that game...!_

—

**Earth Alliance battleship **_**Charlemagne**_

Plowing forward with a hail of beam fire in front of it, the _Charlemagne_ spewed smoke and sparks as it led the charge against Messiah. The ZAFT fleet was beginning to pull back ahead of them and enough of the Alliance and Resistance ships had pulled themselves out of the melee to launch what Danilov hoped would be a credible attack. But they still had to get through that beam shield—

"Oh, shit!" Sting Oakley's voice ripped through the bridge. "The NEO-GENESIS! _Everyone move!_"

"Helm, hard to port!" Danilov roared—

The world seemed to disappear as Messiah's NEO-GENESIS array came to life. The iridescent column of radiation swept forward; the _Charlemagne_ shook as it seared by the ship's hull and began to tear away weapons and armor; other ships writhed and exploded amid the blast; Danilov gripped the armrests of his seat until his knuckles turned white. Up on the auxiliary screen, the feed from Admiral Barton's flagship went black; out of the corner of his eye, Danilov watched the carrier buckle under the NEO-GENESIS's blast and explode.

"_Charlemagne,_ are you still there?" came Sting's voice again. Danilov painfully turned his eyes back out the windows and found the blast dying down—and the massive field of wreckage where so much of the fleet had once been.

"We...we're still alive," he answered, "but..." He shook his head. "Damage report, now!"

Vera painfully got back to her feet and consulted her console. "Our...entire weapons system is offline, sir," she said. "Hull breaches all over the ship. Power conduits broken. Life support systems fluctuating."

"So," Sting said quietly, "you're _not_ still with us."

Danilov looked up grimly towards Messiah, through that shimmering beam shield, and knew it was recharging the NEO-GENESIS array for another attack. And with that beam shield, it could sit there and blow away the Alliance and Resistance forces with impunity. Even if that red machine was stopped, they could still irradiate the Earth at will and exterminate every living thing on its surface.

"What about the engines?" he asked suddenly.

The helmsman stirred at his seat. "They're on auxiliary power, but they're still online."

"Then in that case," he slowly got to his feet, "muster all personnel to the escape launches. And set a ramming course for the beam shield ring."

The helmsman blinked and the bridge crew looked at each other anxiously. "A ramming course...?"

"Sir, if we evacuate they'll be able to knock the ship off course—" Vera started.

"Then I will stay here and _keep_ it on course," Danilov said.

Sting frowned. "Y'know, a heroic suicide is kinda dumb when it isn't really necessary—"

"It is," Danilov insisted. "We have to pierce that beam shield. If the _Charlemagne_ can't fight, it can at least act as a giant battering ram. Just long enough for some units to get in and destroy the beam shield from the inside, so we can destroy this fortress." He gestured impatiently at Messiah. "They can fire again. They'll kill everyone. And..." He shook his head. "I...have to do something. To atone."

Sting blew out a sigh through his nose. "You know, I watched one Alliance warship captain with a good heart sacrifice himself to ram his ship into a big scary thing. I think one is enough."

He glanced pointedly at Vera, who immediately took her cue to step in front of Danilov. "If you want to atone, captain, then you're coming with us," she said. "Suicide isn't atonement. It's cowardice. If you want to atone for what you've done in the Phantom Pain, then come with us—and tell the whole world what the Phantom Pain did. Help bring them to justice. Do something with the rest of your life, instead of throwing it away."

"And as for your ship," Sting said with a smirk—and the Fujin, Kali, and Marduk Gundams formed up outside the bridge— "well, we'll take care of that."

Danilov looked between them all for a long moment, and then bowed his head. "Helm, ramming course, engines to maximum," he said. "And then, we're going."

—

Sting Oakley smiled as he watched the last launch skitter out of the _Charlemagne_'s gaping hangar. Hayden's Windam and a group of other mobile suits from the Resistance were there to escort them to...wherever it was they were going. As long as it was somewhere safe, Sting no longer cared.

After all, as the vast black spear of the ruined _Charlemagne_ roared forward, he had more important things to worry about.

"Alright, everyone, listen up," he barked. "We're gonna crash this thing into the beam shield ring on Messiah, like a big battering ram. Wherever you see an opening in the shield, take it. Then turn your fire on the ring itself. And do it quickly, before they recharge the NEO-GENESIS. You got that?" A chorus of affirmatives came back, and Sting broke into a grin. "_Then let's do it!_"

The Fujin, Kali, and Marduk Gundams rocketed toward Messiah, and a small army of mobile suits rushed in after them. The ZAFT warships and mobile suits turned their fire towards the _Charlemagne_, but the survivors of the last NEO-GENESIS blast threw up a wall of firepower around the black battleship that drove the ZAFT ships back and blasted mobile suits out of the sky. The Marduk took its opportunity to lunge down in front of one of the _Nazca_ destroyers and spear it on a storm of beam gun shots; the other mobile suits swept in to tear it apart as the Marduk darted away.

The _Charlemagne_ shuddered as a line of railgun shells smashed into its smoldering prow—but the ship kept going, engines blazing, and smashed through the missiles and beam fire. A squad of Gunner ZAKUs rushed in, beam cannons extended; the Kali Gundam lunged into their path and tore one of them in half with a backhanded beam saber blow, then shot another one down with its beam rifle. The two survivors darted apart, only to be blown away by the Fujin's gunbarrels.

"Brace yourselves, kids!" Sting shouted. "It's showtime!"

With a thundering blast and a shockwave that rippled across the battlefield, the _Charlemagne_ slammed head-on into Messiah's beam shield ring. The warship buckled forward and exploded; the shield flickered and a section vanished; dozens of Resistance and Alliance mobile suits streamed through, and the Fujin, Kali, and Marduk slipped through before it closed. Auel whirled around with a scream and fired the Callidus Mk II cannons into the ring; the other mobile suits turned their guns on the structure, and the shield began to flicker again.

Sting turned around to face the fortress and smirked at the hundreds of mobile suits emerging from it. Behind him, the beam shield gave one last gasp before it vanished—

...and then a storm of firepower emerged from Messiah. Beam guns, artillery shells, and missiles streamed out from the fortress towards the oncoming enemies.

"Well," Sting said with a sigh, "I guess we should've known it would be a pain in the ass on the _inside_ too."

The Kali moved forward, eyes flashing to life. "Stella's not afraid."

"You're _never_ afraid," groused Auel.

Undaunted, the three Gundams turned towards the fortress and went on the attack.

—

Emily clenched her teeth as the Eclipse lurched back from one of the Gemini cannon's massive blasts. The Amaranth's DRAGOONs lashed out around her and their bolts singed the Eclipse's armor. Emily lit up the Dragon's Tail and charged forward, but the Amaranth left her behind amid a flurry of afterimages and forced her back on the defensive with another titanic Gemini blast.

"You're making this difficult," Emily grunted.

"Of course I am," Unit Zero-Two snapped back. "It's my _job_."

The Amaranth's DRAGOONs blazed in again; Emily darted around their blasts and exchanged the Dragon's Fire launcher for the Eclipse's massive beam sword. "I can't believe you'd really rather do this," she shot back. "You _know_ you can be something else! _I_ know! Why won't you do it?!"

"As I thought," Zero-Two snarled, "you still don't understand!"

The DRAGOONs honed in again and pounded the Eclipse's beam shield. The Amaranth lined up its Gemini cannon; Emily blasted through an opening in the DRAGOON fire as the double-barreled cannon came to life, and then swept down towards the silver Gundam. The Amaranth snapped up its beam saber to deflect the Eclipse's downward slice.

"You come running to me here, acting like I'm really your mother!" Zero-Two said. "Don't you understand? _I'm not!_ And that's why they sent _me_ to fight you—so you would get distracted, so you would hesitate!" Two white blocks on the Amaranth's shoulders opened up; Emily squinted as two machineguns inside pounded the Eclipse's face with bullets. Zero-Two slammed her machine's knee up into the Eclipse's chest, then knocked it back with another kick. "Little did I know you would be such a _fool!_" The Amaranth brought the Gemini to bear again; the Eclipse lunged upward as it fired once more.

"I don't expect you to be my mother!" Emily cried. "But I know you can be something more than..." She shook her head. "Something more than _me!_"

The DRAGOONs swarmed around the Eclipse again as the Amaranth gave chase. "Yes, that life you showed me looked very nice," Zero-Two answered. "And I'm sure Lorelei was a wonderful person. But you are still a fool for thinking I will be anything but what I am!" The Amaranth slammed a Gemini blast into the Eclipse's beam shield. "All I've ever been doing is fulfilling my destiny!"

Emily's eyes went wide at the word—and then she jammed the controls back as the DRAGOONs fired again. "Destiny...?"

"You still think that you can bend the world to your will!" Zero-Two shouted, as the Amaranth and its DRAGOONs closed in. "You still think you can change me if you try hard enough! But you should understand better than anyone else how impossible that is!" The Amaranth darted down into the Eclipse's face for a beam saber blow; Emily swung back with the sword to stop it cold. "Even as you run from your own destiny, you fulfill it! Look around you! Look at the machine you're piloting! Look at what they call you! You think you _aren't_ what you were made to be?!"

"This is _my_ power!" Emily shot back. "I made it my own, even if I never chose to have it!"

"Don't make me laugh!" The silver Gundam reared back and slammed the Eclipse with another kick; Emily threw her mobile suit back as the DRAGOONs started up again. "What does the Angel of Death do, huh?! He takes those whose time it is to die! And what do _you_ think you've been doing ever since you got pulled into this war?!" The Amaranth pounded the Eclipse with more beam blasts. "So don't talk about changing me when you can't even change yourself!"

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

Loathe as he was to admit it, Lyle Markus did have to give a perverse sort of credit to the late captain of the _Elysium_ from that battle at Deimos. The explosive properties of antimatter's contact with matter had interesting battlefield uses.

They were around here somewhere. His eyes darted over the wreckage, waiting for the _Minerva_ to rear its battered head. They still had their weapons and speed, but their armor was beginning to wear thin. And the Tannhäuser was recharging for another blast. All they needed to do was knock them into a corner.

Something flashed off the starboard bow. "Helm, descend!" Lyle barked—and the _Fortuna_ veered downward just as the _Minerva_ crested a drifting piece of debris and fired its Tristan cannons. "Isolde, fire!" The _Fortuna_'s Isolde obligingly boomed back, and the _Minerva_ wobbled as a shell clipped its starboard side.

"Heat signatures rising in the _Minerva_'s prow," the sensor officer spoke up. "They look to be charging their Tannhäuser."

"Steer clear of the _Minerva_'s prow," Lyle ordered. "Weapons control, another barrage of Neidhardts, on the double!"

A storm of Neidhardt space missiles burst out of their tubes and rushed through the rubble towards the _Minerva_. The red and gray warship's CIWS emplacements cut them down—but it was enough time for the _Fortuna_ to swing around and slam the _Minerva_ with a pair of Tristan blasts that left smoking black scars on the ship's hull. The _Minerva_ sank down below the _Fortuna_ and slammed a trio of Isolde shells into the ship's underside.

Lyle scowled as the _Fortuna_ bucked from the blow. "Helm, come around and get on their tail!" he ordered, and glowered down at the _Minerva_ passing by underneath. _Nowhere to run now..._

—

Kayla Segar could only sob as the news spread through the fleet. What was an army without its leader? What was a people without its hero?

She drifted numbly through her bunk as the _Fortuna_ rattled and twisted in combat. For so long, he'd borne their hardships as his own and promised through his tireless leadership that they would have a greater destiny than miserable exile at Mars and the specter of extinction. He had promised them a better world. And now he would never see it. It was so unfair. He had led them to the promised land, and yet they had to leave him on the mountain.

And he had borne so much suffering for their victory. It had broken his heart to give the orders to slaughter innocent civilians, to gas neutral colonies, to break, bend, and terrify the world before them. He was too good a man to truly revel in the bloodshed, as some of ZAFT's soldiers did.

She scrubbed away her tears. Kira Yamato's military aide was out of a job now, but he had given his life so that the Coordinators might have a free and secure existence. They would build a society that would represent the best of humankind, the fullest expression of human potential, the greatest achievements of human ingenuity and effort. He had given his life for humanity's greatness.

And so long as she survived, she could honor that sacrifice.

—

The Fujin Gundam rocked as a trio of artillery shells slammed into it from above. Sting grunted as he was thrown forward in his seat; the Fujin's gunbarrels flashed to life and charged forward. The Alliance and Resistance mobile suits behind intensified their fire—but between Messiah, the surviving ZAFT fleet, and the ZAFT mobile suits, it was like running straight into a wall.

Sting cringed as his four gunbarrels were all torn apart in the crossfire. He fired back with his beam rifle and then ducked aside to dodge a volley of return fire that ripped off the Fujin's right leg. He fired off the micromissiles and backed away behind his beam shield.

Up above, the Kali Gundam spiraled elegantly through a hurricane of beams and shells—but one of them sliced through the Kali's left shoulder and blew away its entire arm. Stella whipped up her rifle to return fire, but then darted away again as the fire returned. And nearby, the Marduk shuddered as artillery slammed against its shoulder shells and a wayward beam blew off the left leg.

"Dammit, we can't get through!" Auel shouted. "Sting—"

The Kali abruptly lunged forward and unleashed a volley of beam fire into the mobile suits ahead. They scattered—and then another wall of beam fire drove them back as the Alliance and Resistance made their attack.

The Fujin plunged forward, beam rifle blazing—and then another blast lanced through the rifle and destroyed it. Sting hurled the useless remains aside and drew a beam saber—and then jammed the controls to the side, just before a pulsing blast from a Gunner ZAKU came at him, and the Fujin's entire left arm and wing vanished in the blaze. The Kali lunged down with a saber slash that ripped the ZAKU in half, but not before another mobile suit had blown away its right leg at the knee.

"Someone help us out here!" Sting screamed—

And then more fire erupted—this time from the rear. Another wall of beam fire slammed into the ZAFT units and drove them back—and then the Blast Impulse Gundam charged into the fray at the head of dozens of Resistance units.

"Repaying the favor!" Aoma Vedlow cried. "Get moving, now!"

"Then let's go!" Sting shouted—and the Fujin and Kali plunged towards the NEO-GENESIS array behind the Marduk. The ZAFT forces intensified their fire—pieces of all three Gundams began to break off as the beams sliced closer—Aoma and her mobile suits pressed the attack—

And with a final shudder, the Marduk fell away and angled down towards Messiah's surface. Sting and Stella lurched after him and the three Gundams, trailing smoke and sparks, slammed into the asteroid's surface and skidded to a halt near an exposed hatch.

Inside the Kali, Stella hung her head for a moment. The Gaia's replacement sure hadn't lasted long. She immediately steeled herself and started pulling equipment from the survival case behind the cockpit seat. Flak jacket, grenades, assault rifle, pistols, jetpack—it was going to get bloody. They had to go down into the bowels of this fortress and find a way to sabotage the NEO-GENESIS system. Aoma said it was directly connected to the reactor, so maybe that would do it. Then they had to get out.

Stella popped open the Kali's hatch and stepped out. Sting and Auel were on their way out as well. Together they hopped off their ruined Gundams and descended into the fortress.

—

With a final triumphant shout, Trojan Noiret brought the Green Frame Kai around to fire a volley of beam rifle blasts into the ZAKU Drone's chest. The black mobile suit exploded; Trojan darted aside, another swept in from behind him, and he whirled around to rip it in two with the custom rifle's beam sabers.

Up above, the Twilight Cortana wove its way through a net of beam fire cast by four Drones, and fired back with its DRAGOONs. The black mobile suits jetted apart; the Cortana's DRAGOONs moved in and Lily responded with a pair of long-range cannon blasts. Two of the Drones vanished in the blaze; the other two rocketed upward and leveled off their rifles, only for the Green Frame to lunge between them and destroy them both with a sweeping saber strike.

"Come on, the rest are distracted!" Trojan shouted; the Green Frame rocketed off into the darkness, and the Cortana followed as its DRAGOONs returned to their rack.

"I can't believe she just ditched us like that!" Lily whined. "Totally not cool!"

Trojan's eyes shifted back and forth over the battlefield as he searched for the telltale afterimages of the Gundam Eclipse. "Either way, we have to find her," he said.

"Yeah," Lily agreed with a sigh, "she'll need our help to capture that Zero-Two chick, I guess."

"Capture or not," Trojan said, his expression darkening, "she'll need us there."

The Green Frame and Cortana rushed off into the battle.

—

The Amaranth Gundam slammed the Eclipse back with a pulsing blast from the Gemini cannon and sent the black mobile suit reeling. Emily yanked back the controls and sailed upward over the shot—and then the DRAGOONs swarmed in to force her back on the defensive.

"Do you finally understand?" snarled Unit Zero-Two as the silver Gundam closed in. Emily whirled around the blasts and came down with an overhead sword blow; the Amaranth swung up its saber to deflect the blow and left the two Gundams locked together under a rain of sparks. "Do you finally understand that _I_ am everything _you_ were meant to be?!"

"Is that all you want to be?" Emily shot back, and the Eclipse jetted away as the DRAGOONs opened fire again.

"It's not about what I want to be," Zero-Two said, "it's about what I am." The Amaranth let loose a swarm of machinegun bullets that rattled against the Eclipse's armor; the silver Gundam swept in as its DRAGOONs boxed in the Eclipse, and Zero-Two brought the Gemini to bear. "I am the ultimate weapon, unhesitating, unflinching, unfettered by emotional attachments—even better than you!"

The Gemini cannon fired; Emily flung the Eclipse through an opening in the DRAGOON blasts and ducked away as the blast seared by. "And you're just going to roll over and accept that?"

"What else _can_ I be?" Zero-Two snapped, as she swung the Gemini around after the Eclipse. "What else can _you_ be, for that matter? What would you do with yourself if this war ended? What will you do with your life when the only thing you can do is fight?"

The Eclipse wove its way through the Amaranth's DRAGOON blasts and brought its sword down hard onto the silver Gundam's beam saber, and the two Gundams glowered into each other's eyes.

"Whatever it is, it'll be my choice," Emily answered, "and that's what I'm offering _you!_"

Zero-Two sneered, and the Amaranth flung the Eclipse away and went back on the warpath.

—

**ZAFT **_**Minerva**_**-class battleship **_**Fortuna**_

The _Minerva_ twisted around to starboard as the _Fortuna_ poured firepower after it, and Lyle Markus barely restrained the urge to smirk. Of course they would prove unable to best the _Fortuna_. They were rejects; the _Fortuna_ was crewed by the cream of ZAFT's crop. Even their ship was beginning to fail them, as bits of the _Minerva_'s armor broke off under the strain of combat and drifted slowly towards the _Fortuna_.

"_Minerva_ coming around, sir," the sensor officer spoke up.

Lyle glanced back up at them. "Tannhäuser charge?"

"Charging is complete, sir," answered the weapons officer.

"Excellent." He looked back up at the main screen. The _Minerva_ was wheeling around to charge straight at the _Fortuna_; at the XO's station, Morales frowned.

"The hell are they doing...?"

"_Minerva_ is increasing to flank speed, sir," the sensor officer said. "Captain, I think they mean to ram us!"

Morales went white. "_Ram_ us?!"

"Those fools," Lyle sneered. "Weapons control, lock the Tannhäuser onto the _Minerva_ and fire!"

The _Fortuna_'s prow swung open and the Tannhäuser cannon edged out. Lyle looked ahead towards the charging _Minerva_ and finally allowed himself a smile as the _Fortuna_'s main weapon lit up. But then something burst around the _Fortuna_'s sides and a thin white cloud began to fall—

And then the whole warship shook violently and the screens flashed as flames and smoke roared up around them. Lyle was slammed back into his seat; he stared in disbelief as a cloud of fire consumed his ship and ripped over its hull.

"What the—_what the hell is going on?!_" he screamed. The _Fortuna_ shuddered as the explosions raked its surface. "Damage report—"

Before Morales ever spoke, Lyle realized with a twist in his gut what had happened. A familiar shape drifted by outside the _Fortuna_'s bridge windows—the shape of an anti-beam depth charge. Those pieces of the _Minerva_ hadn't been pieces, and when the _Fortuna_ had used its own positron cannon—

_They...turned it against me?!_

And up ahead, the _Minerva_ fired its own Tannhäuser, and all went dark.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah**

Sting Oakley grunted loudly as he ducked into an alcove in the corridor, bullets flying. Up ahead, one of the ZAFT soldiers flung a grenade into the hallway—but Stella lunged out of hiding to catch it and hurl it back, then throw herself back into the opposite alcove. A thundering explosion sent a wall of smoke bursting down the corridor; the three Extended waited a moment before proceeding forward.

As Stella took point with an assault rifle in hand, Sting ran over the plan in his mind one more time. Aoma had laid it all out for them, albeit in abbreviated and hurried form; break into one of the maintenance nodes, isolate control from all other stations, disable the cooling mechanisms, increase every power feed to several times their maximums...and then get the hell out. Simple, right?

A pair of ZAFT soldiers up ahead ducked out of cover and brought their guns to bear—but an instant later, Stella was there to stab one of them clear through the throat with her rifle's bayonet. She whipped around with the dead man still caught on the knife and slammed his body into his comrade, then yanked the bayonet out and backed away, just as Auel peppered them both with a burst of rifle fire.

"Another sixty meters," Sting said as he pointed up ahead. "Then we make a left and cut through a maintenance shaft."

"Great," Auel breathed, "and how do we get back out?"

"Vedlow said there should be a bank of shuttle bays four floors up—"

"Watch out!" Stella shouted, and rammed her shoulder into the two Extended as bullets sliced down the hallway. Auel screamed in pain as one of them shot through his right leg; Stella shouldered her way back into the corridor to lay down a screen of suppressive fire, while Sting shoved Auel against the wall and assessed the wound.

"Don't be a pussy, it missed the bone," he grumbled.

"Just shut the fuck up and patch it, you asshole," Auel hissed back through gritted teeth.

Stella charged forward with a shout—and up ahead, the three ZAFT soldiers in front of the maintenance hatch backed away in disbelief. Stella plunged in between them with a knife drawn in her left hand—and in seconds, two of the soldiers went down with strangled cries and clouds of blood. The third backed into the wall, white with terror, as Stella brought her bloodstained knife around towards his neck.

And then the knife stopped, and Stella stared expectantly at him. A moment later, he dropped his rifle and fled.

"What, you spare people now, Stella?" Sting scoffed. Auel let out a yelp as he finished patching the wound.

Stella pointed to the maintenance hatch. "In. Let's get this done."

—

"What the hell do you _mean_ 'intruders?'" Valentine snapped. The officer in charge in the ZAKU Goliath's dimly lit control room squirmed in his seat.

"That's just what Reeves said, ma'am," he protested. "Since the beam shield fell, the fortress has been under assault and they reported—"

Valentine buried her face in her palm with a frustrated groan. With Kira gone and herself in the Goliath, everything was going to hell.

But fine. Let it. If they couldn't handle themselves without Kira or Valentine to hold their hands, then they had no place in the new world to come. Instead, the ZAKU Goliath's shield still held and the superweapon was still on its inexorable course to the Earth. And with the Armageddon cannon at forty-nine percent charge, another city of wretched Naturals would soon be erased from the map.

"Tell Reeves to get rid of them immediately," she said. "As for the rest of the fleet, we will continue as we are. We're almost to Earth. Don't go ruining this now."

The ZAKU Goliath rumbled forward.

—

**Battleship **_**Minerva**_

The world came back as a painful rush of sounds and feelings, and for a moment, Shinn Asuka wondered if he was dead.

But if he was dead his head wouldn't hurt so much. He blinked away the blurriness and slowly sat up. He was in the _Minerva_'s infirmary—the infirmary? He glanced around slowly, and found Athrun sitting on a nearby bed, wrapped up in bandages, with a sad smile on his face—and Viveka sitting next to him, her head on his shoulder, sound asleep.

"I see you're back," Athrun said softly.

"Something like that," Shinn grunted, and rubbed his own head. "What happened...?"

"You tell me. We found you inside what was left of the Zulfiqar."

Shinn blinked again and rubbed his eyes. "And...what about Rau?"

Athrun smiled. "He won't be causing us anymore problems." He glanced over at Shinn. "And Kira...?"

"The same."

Both men looked quietly towards the floor. Shinn slowly laid back down. For so long he had been consumed with the idea of revenge on Kira Yamato, and now that he finally had it, he didn't feel any different than he had before.

The rumbling of explosions slowly reached his brain. "The battle's still going on?"

"Yeah," Athrun said, and his smile disappeared as he glanced at Viveka. "So we'll just have to hope."

—

The Amaranth delivered a bone-rattling kick to the Eclipse's torso and sent the black Gundam reeling. It swung up its Gemini cannon for a lethal blast; the Eclipse dove out of harm's way and left a shimmering trail of afterimages as it whirled around through the DRAGOON fire, back towards its silver foe. The Amaranth stabbed forward with its saber; the Eclipse parried the blow with its beam sword and left the two Gundams struggling against each other.

"You are getting on my nerves," Unit Zero-Two growled through clenched teeth.

Emily winced as she felt the frustration rippling out from her foe—and the familiar core underneath. She knew she was supposed to believe that that thing staring back at her wasn't her mother—but how could she when this Newtype sense of hers told her otherwise?

The Amaranth showered the Eclipse with machinegun fire; Emily plunged forward anyway and drove the Amaranth back. Zero-Two rammed a knee up into the Eclipse's chest, then backed away and swung up the Gemini cannon—

"_Emily!_"

A wave of green and red beam blasts shot out of the sky and went searing past the Amaranth. Zero-Two snarled in frustration as she dodged the blasts and whipped up the Gemini to fire back at the new arrivals—and Emily felt her stomach twist as the Green Frame Kai and Twilight Cortana soared into battle, the latter's DRAGOONs lashing into the fight.

"Trojan, Lily, don't!" Emily cried. "You can't handle this—"

"Like hell you're doing this alone!" Lily shouted, and the Cortana closed in with a beam rifle volley. The Amaranth dodged the shots—then whipped around and rocketed above a horizontal saber swipe from the Green Frame.

"More of you, huh?" Zero-Two snarled. "That suits me just fine!"

Emily charged after the Amaranth with a sweeping sword blow—but the DRAGOONs pummeled the Eclipse and drove her back. The Green Frame swept in from behind, but the Amaranth whipped around and deflected its downward saber blow, then slammed it back with a kick to the chest. The Cortana's DRAGOONs blazed in next—but the Amaranth whipped around and disintegrated them all with a single pulsing Gemini blast.

"What the—?!" Lily wailed. "No fair!"

"Lily, get back!" Trojan shouted, and the Green Frame kicked the Cortana aside—then darted to the right, just as the Amaranth brought down its saber and sawed off the Green Frame's left arm at the shoulder and left leg at the knee. "Dammit—!"

"I told you, she's too good!" Emily shouted, and the Eclipse flung itself back into the fray with a downward sword hack. "Stay back, both of you!"

The Amaranth whirled through a maze of beam rifle fire and blasted away with its Gemini cannon again. Lily yelped in surprise and jammed her mobile suit to the right—but not before the sweeping blast coursed over the right side of her mobile suit and reduced it to a charred stump. Lily screamed as the maimed Cortana reeled—and then the DRAGOONs darted in to blow away the remaining arm, cannon, and head.

"_Lily!_" Emily screamed, and rushed after the Amaranth—but the DRAGOONs changed course and swarmed around her instead. She battered her way through the beams and threw herself in between the ruined Cortana and the charging Amaranth, and deflected its saber blow with her sword. The Amaranth backed away with a machinegun burst and the DRAGOONs charged in again.

"Lily, are you alright?" Trojan cried.

A cough came back from what remained of the Cortana. "No...f-fair..."

"Lily, get out of here, now!" snapped Emily. "Trojan—" She blinked and looked around. "Trojan, where are you?"

Her blood froze as she watched the Green Frame charge towards the Amaranth. "I'll distract her, you get Lily out of here!" he shouted.

"No, Trojan, _don't!_"

The Green Frame swung its rifle around and slammed the blades into the Amaranth's saber. Zero-Two scowled back and flung the Green Frame away; the silver Gundam swung up its Gemini cannon; Emily screamed—

And then, in a blinding green flash, Trojan was gone.

Emily stared in shock at the blast as it disintegrated the Green Frame. She looked back towards the Amaranth, towards Zero-Two—remorseless, indifferent, unfeeling. The pulsing core of her mother's soul still beat underneath all that—but the pain lanced through her heart as she felt Trojan's presence vanish into the void. Her mother, remorseless, indifferent as she destroyed someone her own daughter cared about. Her mother, whirling around to bring that double-barreled cannon to bear on her. Her own mother—but Trojan—

Her mind flashed back to what Rau had said. A test. If she couldn't save that thing in there, then this world was beyond redemption. And Trojan—

Her mind went to her father, in that darkened lab, telling her that this would happen. He had been right. Her heart broke as she realized he had been right—about Zero-Two, about her, about everything. And Rau had been right. She couldn't save what was in there—not now, not that it had taken something just as valuable from her.

But Lily was still there. Her presence still flickered, like a candle flame in a gentle breeze. If she had accepted this in the beginning, maybe Trojan wouldn't have died. If she had accepted this in the beginning, maybe it would be different. But it could be different still, and worse—or else—

The seed burst.

The Amaranth fired. The Eclipse darted above the blast. Emily ripped off her helmet and threw it aside. She fixed the Amaranth with a determined glare through teary eyes. "So you were right after all, father," she whispered. "I can't save you..."

Zero-Two charged after the Eclipse, bringing the Gemini to bear again. Emily clenched her teeth and fought down the pain.

And then the Eclipse blasted forward as the Voiture Lumiere system roared to life. Zero-Two reared back in surprise as the Eclipse wrapped its Dragon's Tail heat rod around the Gemini and ripped the weapon from the Amaranth's grasp. She brought the Amaranth's own Voiture Lumiere to life and red light flooded the battlefield; the two Gundams whirled around each other, afterimages flashing and beam wings blazing against the black sky of space. Emily closed in with a shout and battered the Amaranth's saber with a ruthless series of sword blows.

"I'll never forgive myself for this," she said. Zero-Two blinked in surprise, then flung the Amaranth away from the charging Eclipse. The DRAGOONs rushed in, beam guns blazing; the Eclipse brushed past them effortlessly and smacked the Amaranth back with a bone-rattling sword blow. "I'll never forgive myself for letting this happen." The Eclipse darted through the beams and charged forward again with another hard swing. "But you're still wrong about me!"

Zero-Two backed away and parried another strike. "You—"

"I'm not going to be like you!" Emily shouted, and the Eclipse closed in. "I'll make a life that's worth all this!" The Eclipse slammed the Amaranth back again. "_It will be worth it!_"

The DRAGOONs blazed in. "Awfully confident, aren't you?!" Zero-Two cried.

As the DRAGOONs swarmed around the two combatants, the Eclipse and Amaranth clashed, beam sword to saber, and a rain of sparks and a storm of afterimages flashed across the battlefield. The DRAGOONs swept in, beam guns alight; the Eclipse danced through their blasts; the Amaranth pulled back its saber for a killing blow as the black Gundam closed in; Emily steeled herself—

And then, faster than the eye could see, the Eclipse ducked beneath the Amaranth's saber swing and slashed the silver Gundam in half at the waist.

The Amaranth Gundam—and Zero-Two inside—vanished in a plume of fire. Emily winced as the pain stabbed through her heart. Her mother's spirit disappeared in that fireball—but she crushed the feelings as quickly as they rose in her chest. That wasn't, after all, her mother. Her mother would have never done something to hurt her. Not something so cruel.

She stared back at the fireball with tears in her eyes for a moment, then opened a channel to what was left of the Cortana. "Lily?" she asked quietly. "Are you alright in there?"

"Y-Yeah," she sniffled, and Emily felt another pang sweep through her heart. "But Trojan—"

"Find a safe place and stay there," she said. "Don't move." She looked back across the battlefield, towards the shimmering beam shield of the ZAKU Goliath. She had promised Selene long ago that she would use this machine to end the war. And a life worth living wouldn't start while that thing was still around.

"Emily...?" Lily asked.

Emily curled her fingers around the Eclipse's controls. "Back in a minute."

The Eclipse took off with a roar.

—

**ZAFT mobile space fortress Messiah**

Sting Oakley howled in pain as a bullet found its way through his shoulder. He dropped to one knee—and Stella seized his fallen rifle in her off-hand and let loose a torrent of bullets down the hallway towards the pursuing ZAFT soldiers.

"Oh, now who's being a pussy?" Auel grunted, as he painfully maneuvered closer to deal with the injury. Stella put herself between them and the ZAFT soldiers as they moved up through a broken elevator shaft. At the top, according to Aoma, was a shuttle bay—and hopefully a shuttle or two.

The whole fortress was in chaos. Some of its crew were trying to evacuate, others trying to undo the damage three Extended had done from a single maintenance station. A core meltdown was already underway and the reactor would explode at any moment. And with NEO-GENESIS's capacitors almost fully charged, there was no way the ensuing damage would fail to knock the fortress out of the battle—or worse.

Which was no particular comfort to Stella, because she and her friends were still inside it.

The three Extended reached the top of the elevator shaft and Stella pried the door open—and immediately threw herself and her friends against the wall as a ZAFT soldier on the other side opened fire with a submachinegun. The bullets bounced through the shaft and one of them grazed Stella's shoulder; she hissed in pain, but shoved it all down and lunged forward, bayonet fixed, and ripped the man's throat open. The mechanics and soldiers around the hangar backed away, and those who were armed reached for their weapons—at least until Stella seized the fallen soldier's rifle and peppered the entire hangar with bullets.

"Sting, Auel, get over there!" she screamed, and nodded over her shoulder—where a green ZAFT shuttle was waiting, apparently for evacuees. Sting and Auel hobbled over as Stella emptied the clips and the ZAFT troops took cover. More soldiers began to creep out of hiding, rifles drawn.

They were her friends. They needed her. They had a future, and she would not let them lose that. The seed fell before her eyes.

Stella took one step back to steady herself and launched two grenades into the soldiers' ranks, then turned on her heel and vaulted towards the open hatch, as Sting and Auel dragged themselves inside. Bullets bounced off the hull around her; she slammed the hatch shut and darted forward into the cockpit.

"Shit, the reactor's going critical!" Auel exclaimed. "Hurry it up—"

He fell back with a yelp as the shuttle lurched forward. Stella narrowed her eyes at the hangar opening ahead—and then the shuttle rattled to life and rocketed out of the hangar.

Stella sat back with a sigh and glanced over her shoulder as she guided the shuttle away. Arms of fire clawed their way out of Messiah's openings. Sparks flashed around the dying fortress. The NEO-GENESIS array flickered once. Messiah vanished in a thundering ball of flames.

And Stella risked a smile as she pointed the shuttle back towards the _Minerva_'s IFF. Her work was done.

—

The Gundam Eclipse hummed as it soared down towards the ZAKU Goliath. Inside, Emily focused her attention on the Newtype pressure inside. It was laced in fear and run through with concentration. Apparently running that beast required the powers of two Newtypes, and now that Zero-Two was gone, the one that was left was trying to pick up the slack. Whatever. It was a nice big target for Emily's own senses.

And as if on cue, another pressure appeared. She glanced to her left—and blinked in surprise as she saw the Fenrir fall into formation behind her.

"You didn't think you were going to take that thing on alone, did you?" asked Morgan Chevalier with a chuckle—and behind them all arose a small army of Alliance and Resistance mobile suits. And more—Emily blinked in surprise as even ZAFT IFFs appeared on her screen.

"What...?" she started.

"Some fellow by the name of Svante has had a change of heart in the ZAFT ranks," Morgan explained. "Guess some of their fleet wanted to get on the right side of history." He gestured up ahead. "So how were we gonna kill this thing?"

Emily frowned. "I was planning on making that up as I went."

"Not bad." He pointed to the Goliath again. "That thing's output dropped precipitously a few minutes ago. Any idea why?"

Emily flinched and more tears threatened to come to her eyes. "Not a clue."

Morgan regarded her silently for a moment and then nodded. "The accuracy of its fire is dropping and those black mobile suits have stopped moving," he said, "so this looks like our chance." He waved to the mobile suits following him. "All units, listen up. We're here to get through that beam shield before all else. Use your own beam shields or anything else with anti-beam coating—"

"I'll do it," Emily said—and with a blast of exhaust and afterimages, the Eclipse shot forward.

The ZAKU Goliath's wealth of mounted armaments opened fire, but caught nothing but mirages as the Eclipse soared down through the fire and towards the shield. Emily swung up her own beam shield and it flashed to life; the two barriers threw sparks as Emily pressed forward, the full power of the Voiture Lumiere behind her; finally, the Goliath's shield gave way and the Eclipse rocketed through.

An instant later, a wall of beam fire and shells slammed head-on into the Eclipse. Emily grunted as she was slammed back in the cockpit seat—and then the auxiliary screen crackled to life.

"So _you're_ that Angel of Death character," sneered a brown-haired woman, arms crossed inside a darkened control room. Emily glowered up at Valentine Sunogachi. "You think you can—"

"Shut up," Emily shot back. Valentine blinked in surprise; the Eclipse blasted forward. The fear inside the Goliath's cockpit spiked as Emily charged forward, Dragon's Fire in hand. The guns turned towards her, but too late—the Eclipse darted through the blasts and squeezed off four quick shots from the launcher. Four blazing blue bolts slammed into the huge metal cones on the Goliath's shoulders, and the shield around the Goliath flickered—and disappeared.

"Look alive, people!" barked Morgan, as the Fenrir led its army into the breach. "The hard part's just beginning!"

The Eclipse roared down towards the Goliath. Emily swapped out the Dragon's Fire for her beam sword and swept down through the massive machine's desperate fire. The Goliath brought its enormous cannon to bear on the approaching mobile suits as they struggled through the defensive fire—Emily charged down towards it and brought her sword down. The blade plunged into the cannon's armor; Emily rocketed to the left and tore a long, smoldering gash into the cannon's side, then swept the Dragon's Tail heat rod up through the surface. The cannon began to throw sparks; the Eclipse backed away, the Goliath abandoned it, and a thundering explosion forced the two mobile suits apart.

"The Armageddon—!" Valentine sputtered. "How—?!"

"I have had it with you psychopaths trying to kill everyone," snarled Emily, as the Eclipse wheeled around, sword blazing. "If the only thing you can do is take lives, then I'm going to put you down."

Valentine scowled back. "Awfully confident for some little Natural, aren't you?"

"I'm more than a Natural," Emily said, and the Eclipse pointed its sword down at the reeling Goliath. "I'm the Angel of Death."

The Goliath let loose another torrent of firepower that sent the Eclipse spiraling away behind its beam shield. The ZAKU Drones shuddered back to life and assembled in front of their towering master, just as Morgan and his troops advanced; the unmanned black mobile suits launched a rapid counterattack, leaving only the Eclipse to face the titan alone.

Emily fixed her attention on the knot of fear coming from somewhere in the Goliath's chest. There were several people in there, all clustered together; destroy the control room and this thing would have no choice but to fall. And then this war would end.

And if that didn't end the war, then she would do the rest herself.

The Eclipse rocketed back down towards the Goliath as the weapons opened fire again. The fear intensified; Emily scanned over the gargantuan mobile suit's body and found her mark in the machine's stomach. The cockpit was somewhere in there.

"This ZAKU Goliath has more going for it than just the beam shield," Valentine said with a scowl, and she sat back. "Transfer all controls to my station. I will teach this little Natural what it means to defy the Coordinators."

The ZAKU Goliath's massive green monoeye flashed—and then two giant shimmering beam saber blades sprang from the machine's forearm armor. It rumbled forward and brought its right arm around for a sweeping horizontal blow. Emily jammed her beam shield up, but the sheer kinetic force sent her reeling all the same.

And yet the Goliath still moved slowly compared to the Eclipse. She took off and the crimson monster's guns roared to life, but Emily wove her way through the blasts and came back down towards the Goliath's head. The Goliath swung up its left arm to deflect the attack with its own sword; Emily rocketed out of the way as it returned fire and honed in on the pressure burning in the machine's chest.

The Goliath charged forward with a serious of ponderous sword swings. Emily danced between the blows—and then, seizing her chance, she darted forward and slashed off the Goliath's left arm at the elbow. The crimson monster backed away as though in pain, staring at the smoldering, sparking stump where its arm had been—and Emily wound her way through the furious fire to seek her next opportunity.

"You think you can just come here and stop us?!" Valentine screamed. "We have justice on our side! We have history! We—"

"I told you to _shut up,_" Emily snapped—and the Eclipse brought down its sword and beam shield to stop the Goliath's remaining blade in its tracks.

Valentine ground her teeth. "You little—!"

"Emily!" Morgan's voice roared. Emily snapped her attention up—and up above, the Fenrir deployed its gunbarrels down towards an incoming armada of ZAFT mobile suits. The attackers let loose a storm of firepower that buffeted the ZAFT units and the Goliath.

"Quit dawdling and kill that fucking thing!" Morgan cried.

Emily saw her chance and charged down through the fray. The Goliath turned its weapons on her; the Eclipse backed away behind its beam shield.

"Don't underestimate us, Natural!" Valentine screamed. The ZAKU Drones rushed up from below and let loose a wave of beam fire that sent the Eclipse reeling. "I am a Newtype too—and I won't let you make our sacrifices be in vain!"

The ZAKU Drones closed in, beam rifles blazing. Emily steeled herself for another effort—

And then the Eclipse thrust its blazing beam sword skyward as the familiar white bolts of energy filled the cockpit—and the inert ZAKU Drones formed up around her, monoeyes blazing to life. The fear spiked again in the Goliath's cockpit as Emily let her sword fall towards the red monstrosity—and the Drones launched themselves towards it, beam rifles blazing. The Goliath's armaments roared to life all the same and sent a hurricane of beams and missiles into the attackers.

But for Emily, the only thing there was that knot of hatred and fear at the machine's center—and she rushed down into the gaps with her beam sword ready. The ZAKU Goliath turned its hands towards her, beam cannons blazing to life from its fingertips; Emily wove her way through the beams and left a cloud of afterimages as she charged forward. The fear surged before her and Valentine screamed as she closed in—

And then, it was gone.

Emily let out her breath as she plunged the beam sword into the armor where the fear felt strongest—and every last one of the presences there vanished in the blaze. She slashed open the armor and then launched herself out of harm's way. The ZAKU Goliath shuddered to a halt; the ZAFT troops seemed stunned beyond resistance; and the Alliance, Resistance, and defecting ZAFT troops focused their fire on the halted monster. The ZAKU Goliath lurched back as the full force of an entire fleet's weapons buffeted it and drove it back.

But as the ZAKU Goliath finally staggered back and broke apart in a thunderous explosion, Emily ignored it, and instead searched the broken battlefield for Lily.

—

**The Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

All was silent in the control room as the ZAKU Goliath disappeared from the tactical map. It was victory, of a sort—but with so many ruined cities, so many lost lives, it tasted as bitter as defeat.

But Admiral MacIntyre would take it.

He rose to his feet at the sight of a balding man in a white ZAFT uniform on the main screen. The bald man saluted. "Commander Paul Svante of the ZAFT forces," he said, and his eyes held the somber resignation of a man leading a defeated army. "I'm the highest ranking ZAFT officer left, of a sort."

"Of a sort?" MacIntyre echoed.

"I'm contacting you to request terms for a ceasefire," he said, "as prelude to a surrender of my forces." He swallowed. "I expect my men to be treated according to the Corsica Treaty's provisions."

MacIntyre frowned. "You're the man who led the fleet that just switched sides," he said. "How do you know they'll trust you?"

Svante gave MacIntyre the saddest smile the admiral had ever seen. "Who else will they listen to?"

MacIntyre regarded the man for a moment, and decided that, opportunist or genuinely good man or not, a chance to end the war now stood before him. "Very well, commander," he said. "Consider a ceasefire ordered."

—

**Debris Belt**

The guns had fallen silent by the time the battered but victorious Eclipse drifted to a halt next to the mutilated Twilight Cortana. Lily was already standing on the blackened armor, tears in her eyes. Emily slipped on her own helmet, closed the visor, opened the Eclipse's hatch, and painfully got out of the cockpit to drift down to Lily—and as soon as they met, they were in each other's arms.

"T-Trojan," Lily sobbed, "he's, he's gone..."

Emily squeezed her eyes shut. There would be time later to let the tears flow. Time when Viveka could hold her and tell her everything would be okay. But for now, that was her role—and if she could do nothing else well today, she would do that.

"I'm so sorry, Emily," Lily went on, "I'm so sorry, if I'd just—"

"No," Emily interrupted, "no, this isn't your fault." She clenched her teeth. No, it was _her_ fault. If she'd just—she pushed those thoughts down. There would be time for those too. But not now.

Trojan...and the little sliver of her mother that she'd seen for so long in that clone. Maybe she would have been able to save her, to save that little spark, to save that last piece of her mother reaching back from the past. Maybe she would have had the parent that loved her back with her again. Maybe he wouldn't have had to die, for something so stupid. Maybe...

But what did that matter.

"But," Lily murmured, "Emily...n-now you're..." She choked on the word. "Alone..."

Emily took Lily by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "I'm not alone," she said, even as the tears flowed. "I'm never alone. And neither are you. Because," she squeezed Lily's shoulders, "we still have each other."

"But I'm not Trojan!" Lily wailed. "I can't be like that—"

"No," Emily said, "but we're not alone." She gestured off—towards the Earth, blue and bright, down below. "We have the whole world. We still have friends. And we still have each other."

Lily looked down haltingly towards the planet. "But...we lost so many..."

"And there's so many we didn't lose," Emily said, smiling through her tears. "I can feel them. Shinn, Athrun, Viveka, Stella, Sting, Auel, Meyrin...they survived. They're still here." She pulled Lily closer and held her tightly as the tears surged. "It's going to hurt. It...it's not going to be the same. But we can...we can make this all worth it. We can make everything worth it." She looked into Lily's eyes, blinking through her tears. "We can live a life that's worth all this suffering. A life that's worth all these deaths. A life that's _worth it_. Doesn't that sound better?"

Lily managed to nod once, before she collapsed against Emily again, and together they wept as they drifted above the Earth on a silent battlefield.

—

**January 9th, CE 78 - Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

A sunny day and a cloudless sky greeted Joseph Copland as he stepped up to the podium. Tradition dictated that the new Secretary-General of the revived United Nations was to make his inaugural address at the United Nations building up in New York, but Secretary-General Copland had chosen a different venue. A more fitting venue for the work ahead.

It would be a different United Nations. A United Nations with teeth, a United Nations with power—but a United Nations without significant force. Nobody would have significant force. Certainly not enough to go repeating what the press had decided to call Ragnarok. Only that armed force consistent with public safety and national defense was acceptable these days. And that was just as Secretary-General Copland liked it.

He shook the hand of the Atlantic Federation's new president amid the audience's applause of his introduction. The poor man was essentially a cabinet secretary elevated to the presidency by destiny and with little idea what he was doing in such a lofty position—all the more so because it wasn't as lofty as it used to be. The politics of a world exhausted by war and wary of the prospects of another did that to an office like that of President of the Atlantic Federation. It hadn't helped that his first act in office had to been to pardon Admiral MacIntyre for his actions regarding President Meyers—and Copland glanced surreptitiously into the audience, where the old admiral himself was sitting with a nervous-looking black-haired girl by his side. Adopted Extended, he'd called her. He smiled. It was a good sign, he supposed.

Copland allowed himself one last look at his chosen venue before he stepped up to the podium and waited for the applause to die down.

"I know," he said, as the audience fell silent, "that this is a break with tradition for new Secretaries-General. I know I should have given my inaugural address at the UN building in New York. But this place," he extended his arms, "this place is a place that human history has forgotten. It is a place we should not have forgotten. There are lessons to be learned here, and we have forgotten them. It is my hope that together, we can learn them once again.

"As the television crews have no doubt told you," he went on, "this place is a memorial to a war from the Anno Domini era. It's a war memorial, but it does not list battles or units or ranks or awards. It lists names. Fifty-eight thousand names, stretching from end to end along a gaping wound in the earth. The wound closes at the far end with the last of the names—but as we know, the wound never really closed, and we never really learned the lesson it held.

"We have forgotten this wall. And we should not have. Because to look at this wall is to look the madness of war in the face." He paused for a moment and looked out over the assorted delegates crowded before him. "The names on this wall are not names of soldiers. They are names of people. To look at their names is to look at fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, friends, who did not come home. To look at this wall is to look at mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, friends, who would nurse pain and heartbreak to the end of their days. To look at this wall is to look at the horrible things war does to people. But we have not looked at this wall in a long time—and it shows.

"And there is another lesson this wall holds, a lesson not even the people of its own time learned." He gestured behind the audience. "You may have noticed the statues pointed towards this wall. You may have overlooked them, because the enormity of the wall commanded your attention. And sadly, that is only human nature. But we must not overlook the ones who came back alive—because they hold lessons for us, and they will need our care and grief and memory, as surely as the dead.

"I have chosen to speak in front of this wall because it is these lessons that we must remember now, in the wake of the bloodiest war in human history," Copland said, his hands resting on the podium. "I have chosen to speak in front of this wall because it is these lessons that must guide us as we rebuild our world. It is this wall that tells us what madness results from turning humanity's energies toward destruction and prejudice, and away from construction and unity." He gestured to the wall again. "There are fifty-eight thousand names on that wall, and there are three soldiers that represent the countless living victims, to remind us of that."

—

**Copernicus, the Moon**

It was supposed to be a temporary measure, but to Kara Guinness, it just felt like sick irony.

The empty streets of Copernicus were now home to a few million hopeless, desolate Coordinators. Officially, the reason they'd been herded here was to avoid the cost of constructing or procuring some other space for refugee housing. But Kara had to wonder, as she stared bleakly across a street still marred by ruined cars and burnt-out buildings, if this was supposed to be some kind of punishment for her people, that they should inhabit the carcass of a city they themselves had killed.

Joseph Copland's voice filled the air. "There were, of course, crimes committed during this war that cannot be forgiven. And even now, diehards from both sides continue to reject reality and carry on the battle. To them, I point to the example already set here in Washington, by the former captain and executive officer of the Phantom Pain's flagship. There will be justice for those who committed crimes during these years of war; but there will be forgiveness for those who seek it—and earn it. And for those who persist in fighting, know that we will not stop until you can no longer threaten our hard-won peace."

Kara shook her head. Somewhere in her mind, she knew she was lucky to still be alive. The Naturals hadn't had to simply shuffle her into the refugee system. The Naturals hadn't had to dump the Coordinators here and feed them enough supplies to survive while a decision was made about their future. The Naturals didn't have to offer to allow them to rebuild the PLANTs at L5—to rebuild their homeland—amid a new and more equitable existence. She knew this, because many of them had made it clear that they hadn't wanted to do so.

But they had.

There was talk from time to time in the camp of continuing the fight. It was all just so stupid. Gary, Juarez...what had they died for? Had they died to see the last of their people treated like castaways? Had they died so that their rebuilt nation could depend on the magnanimity of the victors?

Was it even worth caring if that's where their new nation was born? She had been fighting for so long, and now, in everything she did, she was just...tired.

"The cruelties of war and the barbarities of prejudice have shattered the bonds of our common humanity," said Joseph Copland, "but that is no reason for us to fail to rebuild them—and to begin again."

Kara hung her head and tried not to cry. Rebuild the bonds, begin again...perhaps she would do that. But she would have to do it alone.

—

_**Nazca**_**-class destroyer **_**Star One**_**, Lagrange Point 5**

With all else said and done, Aoma Vedlow was at least grateful to have a fellow ZAFT Red among her ranks. They were few and far between these days—and most of them were among the masses of the defeated forces of ZAFT, and legally barred from military service or ownership of weapons. Aoma figured it was only fair. The last time they'd owned weapons, they had tried to destroy the entire world. You just didn't give matches to a pyromaniac unless you wanted your house burned down.

And Riika Sheder was about as good as they came. She was no Shinn Asuka, no Athrun Zala, but she got the job done well enough.

Together they stood on the bridge of the _Star One_, as the Vedlow Fleet patrolled the space around Lagrange Point 5 and Joseph Copland blathered on about reunification and reconciliation and truth commissions. Let him talk philosophy and high ideals. There was work to be done here. A vast fleet of construction and cargo ships had descended upon L5 to break up the shoal zone and get to work on a new set of PLANTs to house what remained of the Coordinator people.

"Many have called for punitive measures against the Coordinators," Joseph Copland said. "To them, I say that you have not learned the lessons of this wall—or the lessons of this war. For it was the bitter cycle of revenge and hatred that brought us to this disastrous point, and we will not produce a better world from these ashes by crucifying someone for it."

Aoma snorted. "Cycle of revenge, huh?"

Riika looked down sadly. "He's right, y'know." Aoma glanced at her. "About revenge. It...really is pretty stupid when you think about it."

Aoma frowned as she studied the other woman's somber face. "I guess," she said at last with a shrug, and turned back towards the bridge windows. "Where's the _Deliverance_?"

The _Deliverance_. That one had pissed off the ZAFT vets. The last ship of the _Eternal_-class, the bone-white _Deliverance_, the new flagship of the fleet of ex-Resistance and Alliance members who had joined forces and weapons to protect the Coordinators in their miserable existence on Copernicus. Some fellow named Hatias had arrested the ship's original captain and taken the thing for his flagship, and he and Commander Svante were leading negotiations with the UN and the nations of Earth on behalf of the Coordinators. Which certainly didn't sit well with the Coordinators.

But if they wanted to live, they would have to play by the rules. The same rules everyone had to follow. There was no sense in going to war these days.

And there was far too much to do.

—

**Althea Crater lunar base, the Moon**

"When's he gonna shut up already?"

"He's a politician, Auel, he doesn't shut up."

The office at Althea Crater was something of a nightmare as Joseph Copland's speech filtered through the PA system and Sting Oakley finished typing up his latest message to Meyrin on Earth. She would distribute it to the rest of their friends, and they would understand that things up here were, well, busy.

"As we rebuild, we must remember that this war has destroyed more than buildings," Copland spoke. "It has left human wreckage as real as any other. From the horrors of Althea Crater to the world's many orphans and wounded and traumatized, this war has had a long reach—and we must answer their needs with world-class humanitarian supplies, medical care, counseling..."

Dr. Coast had set up quite an operation working on these Extended. Hayden had shown up well, for "security." At Althea Crater, "security" meant capturing unstable Extended children who tried to escape from time to time—which was why Hayden was in charge of quite a team of burly men all remarkably skilled at the art of wrestling angry preteens to the floor and injecting them with sedatives.

"Hey, I thought you were going to get Caitlyn some more counselors," Auel spoke up, and thumped his hands on Sting's desk. "She said she's short-staffed."

"I know, I know," Sting said, "but the flights are all screwed up and I had to deal with the shipment of surgical supplies for Coast first."

Auel looked decidedly displeased but apparently thought better than to press the issue. Sting idly wondered how much of this was about Dr. Hardin's pressing need for increased counseling staff and how much was because Auel totally had the hots for her. It was probably even.

Then again, nobody had thrown himself into this business more deeply than Auel Neider, the "former Extended" who made it a point to work with those Extended subjects who had reached more advanced stages of their rehabilitation. In six months of this, Sting, Auel, and everyone else involved in the project had rapidly learned that rehabilitating an Extended subject was only possible if one followed a long and arduous process rife with setbacks and false starts, and not all of them were strictly medical. Everyone, including Auel, knew he would not have the patience for those earlier stages.

"Above all else," Copland said, "we must offer the human victims of these long years of war our love, our understanding, our compassion, our charity—and our community."

And as for Sting...

He looked down at the stack of paperwork on his desk, at the messages piling up on his computer, at the myriad of things that still needed doing, and he smiled. Captain Lee would be proud.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Dr. Hardin, after all, _did_ need some more counselors.

—

**Junk Guild supply ship **_**ReHOME**_**, Earth orbit**

"And as we recall the human victims of this war, we must recall that they do not exist here on Earth alone," said Joseph Copland. "They are everywhere, wherever human beings make their home—because this war has touched every place that human beings call home."

The speech was background noise on the bridge of the _ReHOME_ as the final preparations took place for takeoff. It was one of those moments that had Lowe Gear absolutely giddy with anticipation—although as Kisato was quick to point out, most moments had him absolutely giddy with anticipation. But Lowe Gear certainly couldn't help it if life was being particularly awesome today.

For the _ReHOME_ had a mission. Questioning of those ex-ZAFT guys had revealed an extensive set of colonies on Mars, more complex than most people had really realized. And those colonies had been just as ravaged by war as the Earth Sphere. The DSSD had already gone out there and some beautiful Coordinator woman had led the charge to establish a new research installation on Mars, where they could begin research and development of a deep space exploration machine. One of the _ReHOME_'s missions was to bring them some startup supplies.

The other mission, though, was one of contact.

"We must offer a helping hand and a compassionate heart to all those around the solar system who have suffered in this war," Copland said, "for it is only by embracing our common humanity and our common descent from this planet that we will prevent another catastrophe."

Well, that was a nice sentiment too, thought Lowe, but just in case he was wrong, there was the _other_ totally awesome part of this mission. And with that, he glanced quickly over at Gai Murakumo, sitting in one of the observer's chairs, stone-faced as always. Serpent Tail was officially along for "security," in case any of those Martian colonists tried to pick a fight. Not that Lowe was worried. He still had the Red Frame, after all.

Canard, though...that had been something of a sad farewell. But Meriol would probably be thrilled to have him back. Lowe smiled at that thought. It was kind of cute. Kisato hadn't stopped gushing.

It was kind of weird this time, having a full crew for the _ReHOME_. But they had months to get to know each other. They had the world ahead of them. They had _Mars_ ahead of them. Lowe Gear had never been to Mars. And he couldn't wait.

—

The _ReHOME_'s crew lounge was almost deserted. Most of the ship's new crew had decided to spend the last few moments before takeoff elsewhere, saying goodbye to family and friends for what would be at least a year's worth of travel and work in the Martian Sphere. But two figures were left in the lounge, comfortably in each other's arms, eyes up towards the screen as the UN's new Secretary-General spoke.

"And even as we seek to bring to justice the criminals of the past seven years," he said, "we must remember that those who brought us this war—those who brought down onto us the greatest evil—were more often than not the victims as much as the rest of us. For it was, after all, the destruction of their people that drove ZAFT to such murderous lengths. And it was, after all, the viciousness of the Resistance that fueled so much of the Phantom Pain's excesses. And it was, after all, the Alliance's oppression that fueled so much of the Resistance's viciousness." He extended his arms. "We must not compromise our pursuit of justice—but nor must we forget that the cruel hand of suffering has not discriminated between the guilty and innocent in these days of war. Let our spirits bend towards forgiveness, whenever they can."

"Hear that?" snorted Shams Coza. "We could've stayed after all."

Mudie Holcroft shot a dubious glance towards Shams. "Those are just words."

"I'm kidding," Shams said with a wave, and pulled her closer. "I still like our idea better. Fresh start, far away from it all. Like they'd bother chasing down a couple of Phantom Pain junior officers all the way to Mars."

They both fell silent, as Mudie drew something out of her coat pocket. "And we do owe it," she said quietly. "To him."

Their eyes fell onto a set of dog tags, with the name, rank, and serial number of Sven Cal Bayan. It had been miraculous enough that someone had found a spare set of those at Daedalus Crater, and it had taken a small fortune to smuggle them out, especially for something of purely sentimental value.

But, as they looked back up at the screen, they knew that Sven would like it out there. It was where he always wanted to be.

—

**Washington, D.C., Atlantic Federation**

Ivan Danilov tugged awkwardly at his uniform collar as he waited in the lounge, with Vera and the rest of his bridge crew by his side. The hearing was not supposed to begin for another two hours, but it wasn't as though he had anything else to do. An ex-Phantom Pain officer's résumé tended to be worth little these days.

The only thing he was good for now, he reflected as he glanced at the committee room doors, was telling the world what he knew. For General-Secretary Copland had called for justice against the worst offenders, and someone had to show them the way.

They—the UN's investigatory committee, the politicians, the world—had offered himself and his officers and crew amnesty in exchange for their testimony, about the highest echelons of the Phantom Pain, about the atrocities they had seen, about those they had committed, about everything they knew of the black-coated devils that had plagued the world and bowed only to Lord Djibril. It would cost him friends, he knew; he was selling out former colleagues, he was breaking confidences, he was the turncoat blabbing all to the enemy to save his own skin.

But, sometimes justice demanded the painful course. Justice had demanded such a course at Volgograd, and Danilov had opted for the painless one—but the memories of that miserable night still haunted his dreams. So, really, the other course was just as painful, and just as inescapable.

Danilov's testimony had already proven useful. Officers around the globe had been arrested and light was being shed on the Phantom Pain's corrupt connections. And the bloodshed had not yet ceased. The story of that Actaeon Industries engineer who had built the Crusader and killed herself when it had been destroyed in battle was but the latest of a string of people indicted by the old regime's crimes who had chosen to go down fighting—or to turn the guns on themselves and try to avoid justice.

But, be it in this world or the next, they would answer. And so would Danilov, because amnesty before the courts of mankind did not mean amnesty before the judgment of God.

He looked back towards the chamber doors. Sooner or later the UN would be done with him, and he would see if their promises of amnesty and safe passage were as good as their word. His crew was going to disperse, and try to fit themselves back into civilian life. Vera was going back home—her parents were driving themselves sick with worry.

But for Danilov...well, the only thing he had left to ponder afterwards was a standing offer from the Junk Guild. One of ZAFT's raids had killed the crew of a _Marseille III_-class freighter, but left the freighter itself in more or less salvageable condition. It needed a crew—and a captain. And the Junk Guild was heavily involved in the budding plan to rebuild the PLANTs for the surviving Coordinator population.

Danilov closed his eyes and considered the possibility that, when he died, he might go before God having created something, and not just destroyed.

It was, he supposed, one way to atone.

—

**Aube, United Nations Mandate of Orb**

"You could learn a thing or two from him," chuckled Viveka. "Sorry, Athrun, but you can't give speeches for shit."

Athrun Zala sat back in his office chair as Joseph Copland spoke on the computer screen before him. It was true, really. Copland hadn't chosen Athrun Zala as the new Administrator of the United Nations Mandate of Orb for his oratory skills.

As the rising skyscrapers and bustling reconstruction economy testified, he'd been chosen for something else.

"Even the nations that were erased by these wars will be rebuilt," Copland added, "and it will be the United Nations' policy to support any peaceful movement that wishes to assert independence denied during the past seven years of war."

"Oh, we'll see how long _that_ lasts," Viveka snorted.

Athrun nodded sagely. High-flying ideals were nice in inauguration speeches, but reality tended not to care. The world's powers had already fractured rather significantly and divided the world up between over a dozen power blocs, and the blocs themselves threatened to fracture even more.

That had been the most painful lesson here. Politics always bowed to reality, not ideals. Orb had been ravaged by years of war, desolation, and neglect. Its entire political system would have to be rebuilt. The five noble families that had been its bulwark were extinct now—but Athrun Zala had a team of lawyers and local politicians crafting a constitution to set up something assuredly better than what Jona Roma Seiran had in mind for the new Orb. Certain segments of the press were demanding that he run for a leadership position in the new government. He would have to make up his mind.

After all, he had Viveka, as he felt the weight of her mechanical arm on his shoulder. In a few weeks, she would fly up to Althea to go see Dr. Coast and have that thing replaced and her new eye put in. It would be years before she could use them as well as she could normal parts, but at least there wasn't a war she needed to fight. And he had other personal bodyguards—although none did quite as personal a job of guarding his body as Viveka von Oldendorf.

So that would be lonely, dealing with the politicians, the corporate executives, the soldiers, the press, the whole crush of being the executive officer of a rebuilding nation...

But there was consolation. He was rebuilding Cagalli's legacy. He was building the Orb she would have wanted: free, democratic, responsible to its people, sensible enough to stay out of foreign entanglements, prosperous, strong.

And there were other things. He glanced up at the clock. It was almost time to send Kyoko off to school.

Poor Kyoko, the black-haired Extended girl that Athrun and Viveka had adopted soon after the war. So quiet, so shy, so frightened of everything, it had taken them weeks to get her to interact with them in a way other than clipped military formality. Athrun idly thought back to Copland's earlier point about the human wreckage of this war. But Kyoko, like Orb, was on the rise. And Kyoko was why Athrun had spent the past week surreptitiously pricing engagement rings. And that had been rather difficult itself, because while Athrun knew a great many things about Viveka von Oldendorf's body, her ring size was not one of them.

Athrun glanced up at the clock again. Viveka followed his gaze and nodded. "You want to see her off or should I do it?"

He waved at the screen. "The press is gonna ask me all about this speech when he's done, so I should probably know what he said in it first. Tell Kyoko goodbye for me."

"You know I will," Viveka said, and left him with a kiss.

Athrun watched her go, and then reluctantly turned his eyes back towards the screen. After all, he had work to do. For Viveka, for Kyoko, for Cagalli...and even for Kira. Not the man he became, but the man he had been, once, long ago.

They all needed a country. They would have it. And Athrun Zala would make sure they got it.

—

A cool ocean breeze washed over the cemetery as two figures approached a car on the edge of the grounds. The dulled sounds of Joseph Copland's speech could be vaguely heard from inside on the radio.

Grey Saiba turned his eyes towards the clear blue sky. It was a life, he supposed.

"Did you talk to your father?" he asked quietly.

At his side, Erin Gedelberg cast her eyes towards the ground. "Yeah, he's...not happy."

"I didn't think he would be." He heaved a sigh. "Are you gonna go back?"

Erin blinked. "Not without you."

"Well then we have a problem," Grey said, and withdrew an envelope from his pocket. "Administrator Zala offered us commissions in the new security force today. Said our Phantom Pain training will pretty much carry over and the retraining will just be a formality. We'd go in as 1st lieutenants, full pay."

"Are you going to take it?"

"Absolutely. It's a job. They'll pay for our university tuition. It's a future." He extended the envelope to Erin. "What about you?"

She stared down blankly at the letter. "What do you think I should do?"

"I think you should do what you want to do."

Erin smiled back. "Then my father will just have to understand," she said.

Together they looked back one more time at the grave with two red roses on top, before they climbed into the car and drove away—and the ocean breeze washed over the simple white grave of Merau Seraux.

—

**Onogoro Island, United Nations Mandate of Orb**

Finally, a place where he didn't have to listen to that damn speech.

Vino Dupre was oddly pleased to be at work for once. It wasn't just because the work consisted of repairs and refit to the mighty _Minerva_ in the Onogoro docks, although it was satisfying to give his old home the good overhaul it so richly deserved.

It was a place of purpose. The whole crew was here, none of them willing to abandon the ship into which they'd sunk their hearts and souls. Abes was in charge of the refit, because no one else was going to oversee the refit of _his_ ship, and Abbey was there as well in her starched white and blue uniform. This ship was going to be a symbol of Orb's willingness to defend its soon-to-be-reclaimed independence, and damned if Commander Abbey Windsor of the Orb Defense Force was going to let the _Minerva_'s crew slack off now that there was no war on.

Vino paused over his work orders and idly wondered if they could ever get Roxy to actually act like a soldier, though. Probably not. On the other hand, she did like her new military paycheck as an ensign in the ODF, since she had more money to blow on booze and all. They were really going to have to get her to cut back.

Across the dock, Yolant shouted orders to a knot of Morgenroete mechanics working on the portside Tristan. Everyone who had survived the war with the _Minerva_ was here, or would be soon. Even _him_.

Vino's thoughts momentarily soured as his thoughts turned to his old friend. But the feeling dissipated. It had been hard lately to muster up the will to hate the man, really.

Because, at this point...who cared?

—

"Stella's just going to the beach," she explained, "to collect seashells."

Shinn Asuka, arms crossed, merely shrugged. "Sounds good to me, Stella. Just be careful."

Stella Loussier gave him a quick hug and immediately skipped through the observation deck's door. Shinn arched an eyebrow as he felt another presence emerging onto the deck overlooking the _Minerva_'s dry-dock, and he turned around.

Not surprisingly, Captain Meyrin Hawke cut a striking figure in the white and blue uniform of the Orb forces. He glanced down at his own clothes, still the beige and black civvies he'd thrown on his morning.

"Not exactly up to regulations there, Lieutenant Commander Asuka," she said with a smirk.

"You can only boss me around when we're both in uniform," Shinn replied with a smirk of his own.

"_Au contraire,_ commander," Meyrin laughed, "a soldier is always a soldier no matter what clothes he wears."

"Then that's going to make this relationship difficult," Shinn replied.

Meyrin stepped up next to him and together they looked out over the seething dry-dock, and their familiar warship berthed within it. "I'm kind of surprised you even accepted the invitation to live here. I thought you hated this place."

"I still have some bad memories," Shinn said with a shrug, "but I think Athrun knows what the hell he's doing. And it's not like he couldn't use the help."

Even up here, there was a need for decorum and they couldn't indulge in their ambiguous but comfortable relationship. Shinn still didn't know quite where they stood—but so far, he was fine with it. Commanding officer by day, friend in the off-hours, lover on the occasional night...he idly reflected that this should have come as no surprise to him, because after all, nobody had been able to decide what his relationship with Stella was either.

And she was happy. She was thrilled to live in a place where the sea was so close at hand. She was thrilled that the paycheck that came with her lieutenant's commission in the Orb Defense Force was enough to buy a truly gigantic aquarium that had only barely fit in their condo. She was thrilled that someone had discovered a cat when Copland had toured Lord Djibril's quarters at Heaven's Base, and, at a loss for what to do with it, he'd sent it to her as something of a Christmas present to the _Minerva_'s tireless crew. It hated everyone, of course, except Stella, which was how everyone knew it had been Lord Djibril's cat. But she was happy. And that made Shinn happy.

And Meyrin was happy. Happy to still have her ship, happy to still have her friends, happy to still have everything going the way it was supposed to go.

So, so what if he couldn't put a name on their relationship? They shared a smile. Names were overrated.

—

The silence was pierced by a knock as Emily von Oldendorf rapped her knuckles against the door to Lily's room.

"You're gonna be late," she warned.

"I'm not coming out," the muffled voice answered.

"It can't possibly be that bad," Emily protested.

"You haven't seen it!" came the angry response.

"Well, if you'd come out of there..."

Finally, the door swung open—and Emily's eyebrows went up as she took in the sight before her.

"Wow," she said, "that _is_ a short skirt."

Lily Thevalley stood before her with a red face, in a beige blazer and a plaid miniskirt that certainly emphasized the "mini" part. "I can't believe this is a _school uniform!_" she wailed.

"Well, it's not that bad," Emily offered with a shrug.

"I'm like candy to perverts now!" Lily continued. "They don't even need to undress me with their eyes! Half the work's done already!"

"Oh, it's not that bad, you big baby," Emily said, and guided her towards the door. "Just don't go bouncing around and you'll be fine. It's just a skirt."

"No it's not!" Lily sputtered. "It'd be generous if I called it a _belt!_"

"Lily, if you're late again, I'm not going to make up another excuse for you about a power sander and a cat in a tree," Emily warned. "You're lucky they believed it at all."

Lily crossed her arms and put on her best pout. "How come _you_ don't have to put up with this crap?"

Emily turned back towards the kitchen in hopes of making some breakfast. "Because I have officer training all through the spring and summer," she said, "and I have university classes starting in the fall."

"Are they going to make _you_ dress like a stripper too?"

"Lily, you do not look like a stripper, now get going."

With a final outraged huff, Lily scooped up her bag and stormed out the door. Emily heaved a sigh as it slammed shut behind her and returned her attention to the eggs frying in the pan before her and the speech still going on over the television.

She wasn't a mother. She wasn't even Lily's legal guardian. Technically, that was Athrun Zala; it was just left to Emily to make sure Lily did the stuff she didn't want to do, like go to school in a skirt that really did seem suspiciously short for a piece of attire to be worn by underage girls. So instead, they had settled in as something like sisters, and that role had never ceased to offer strange new twists and turns for Emily. Viveka was always busy "protecting Athrun's body," as she'd put it—Emily never wanted to know what exactly that meant—and everyone else...well, they were still there, but they had other things going on now too.

Everyone did, even the ones she'd only met seemingly so long ago. She idly thought back to Ed and Jane, wrapped up as they were in the business of building a new South America. It was odd to picture Edward Harrelson in a crisp black suit and multicolored sash as the President of the United States of South America, but no one could unite the disparate factions and lead them towards stability and prosperity like the Hero of South America. And there was Sahib, who had taken his guerrillas and simply gone back home when the war ended—the home that had always been all they really wanted. As had the guerrillas at Aqrah in northern Iraq, and the fighters at Murmansk, the survivors of Volgograd, Novorossiysk, Carpentaria...and so it was that they had all lost touch and gone their separate ways.

Someday, she supposed, they might reunite—and when they did, perhaps they would have better things to share with each other.

Emily glanced around the kitchen of the modest condominium Athrun had procured for her. It was enough to live in for two teenage girls, one of which had done far more growing up in the past year of her life than she'd ever really expected. Roxy had stocked it with enough booze to get her and everyone else in the building arrested if the cops ever checked this place. Emily had yet to touch it. Down that road lay only bad things, she knew. Many people used alcohol to drown demons...and did she ever have demons.

The reminder for that was the pictures on the wall. She hadn't gotten any pictures of herself with Trojan Noiret during his short few months on the _Minerva_, but after some research, she'd found an Alliance military file on him during his time training with Barry Ho in East Asia. The long brown bangs, the thin face, the mischievous brown eyes...it was close enough to the Trojan she so fondly remembered.

And in that respect, at least so far, Lily had been right. The wound was still too raw to let her think about moving on in that part of her life. She'd had no shortage of boys falling all over themselves to win her favor during her last few classes of high school in the fall, and she suspected the same would be true later on. And perhaps someday she might find someone worth it in that pile of suitors. Someday. But not right now.

Right now, she would just have to press on. Because the other picture on the wall was the one she had of her mother. And that was a wound too raw to even think about.

She'd never found out what happened to Rau. According to Athrun, he had been killed in the fighting. As time went on, she began to suspect that the masked man hadn't been entirely above board with her...but who cared now? He was gone. And in the end, he'd still been right. What was important wasn't what she destroyed; it was what she built in its place.

Joseph Copland's voice drifted to her ears as she cooked her breakfast.

"We as a species have done terrible things, to ourselves, to each other, and to our planet," he said. "And it is only fitting and proper that we study our mistakes, so that we might prevent them. It is only fitting and proper that we seek the worst offenders, so that we might bring them to justice. It is only fitting and proper that we mourn the dead and care for the victims, so that we might never forget those we lost, and so that we might mitigate the suffering that still goes on. But we must never dwell. We must never be consumed by the war. For we are hopeful creatures, and we are better than wallowing in misery and self-pity." Copland extended his arms. "So let us turn our energy, our efforts, our resources, our treasure, and our blood towards the future—a future worthy of these sacrifices."

Emily smiled.

—

End


End file.
